


Always Close to You

by Dracoduceus



Series: Always Close to You [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, Blackwatch Genji Shimada, Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Moira O'Deorain, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Present Day Genji Shimada, Present Day Hanzo Shimada, Secret Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Travel Shenanigans, brief discussion of gore, brief discussion of torture, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 07:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18752077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: Hanzo and Genji were arguing on a cliff when they were suddenly yanked back in time to when Blackwatch was at its peak. As they struggle to find their way back to their own time without ruining history, Hanzo must confront the ghosts that still linger in the past of those he loves...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from one of my favorite songs, ["Pili Mau Me 'Oe"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgOxbbMszmw). 
> 
> Written partially out of spite, partially because [Hero](https://twitter.com/ichigowhiskey) gave me the most delicious angst prompt and I couldn't _not_.
> 
> I know that because of the "Major Character Death" tag I might not get a lot of readers to this, but this is mostly self-indulgent so that's fine :P

Hanzo’s hands were shaking.

It was shock—some part of him could tell exactly what it was. A detached part of his mind rattled off the symptoms: shakes, a clammy feeling, blank stare, repetitive motion.

He put his hands under the water again, grabbed a few pumps of the gritty soap used in the workshop, and put it to his skin. There was something in them that broke down the grease and there were little bits of silica scrub that scoured the rest away. The ladies (most of them engineers, themselves) around base liked to joke that it was an engineer’s version of a spa day.

His skin was red and raw from fingertip to elbow.

The stains weren’t going away.

They would never go away.

* * *

“Fascinating,” Moira said for the fifth time.

“What?” Reyes demanded.

Moira held up the pad and wiggled it as if in emphasis; McCree had always suspected that it was so that none of them could clearly see what she was _actually_ writing. “Scans indicate that the Genji _is_ in fact Genji with enough variations to suggest that he is an older form of our fellow teammate.”

“And the other?” Reyes asked. The man said nothing, in a strange sort of catatonic shock. His vacant eyes were trained on McCree.

“The man has anomalies on his left arm and right leg that affected my scans,” Moira said a little sourly. “But genetic mapping indicates that he is a close relative of Genji. Perhaps…a brother?” her lips curled. “The plus side is that if Genji decides to kill him, he is organ- and blood-compatible with a few members of Blackwatch.” 

The other Genji shifted his helm. It was unnerving to see his friend so still, his face so calm. “Do not try it,” he advised simply. Unlike McCree’s version of Genji, he was fully armored in a shiny blue-black set of armor that reminded McCree of a beetle’s wings. The lights along his abdomen were electric blue, as was the hair beneath his helm.

“That isn’t me,” McCree’s version of Genji said bluntly. His _shuriken_ spun nervously in his knuckles.

McCree nodded at the other man. “And him?”

Both Genjis turned to look at him. “He is in shock,” the new Genji said simply. “Has been for the past few days. We have been…in mourning.”

Perhaps it was testament to Genji’s trust in Reyes that he hadn’t yet killed his brother. McCree turned to watch the two of them, Genji looking at Reyes while Reyes rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“ _Brother_ ,” the new Genji said in Mandarin and McCree kept his face neutral. “ _Are you well? I know it’s—_ ”

“ _McCree can speak Mandarin_ ,” Genji’s brother said abruptly, a burst of sound before he stopped. He took a deep, unsteady breath. “ _He’s a polyglot even though he likes to pretend he isn’t._ ”

Something happened there. Genji’s brother knew him and McCree wanted to know why. He itched for a smoke but Moira would zap him with her purple lasers if he lit up here so he settled for gnawing on the end of a cigar. It earned him an ugly glare from her but when he didn’t reach for his lighter, she paid no more mind to him.

The new Genji turned to look at McCree. “ _That bastard,_ ” he said, sounding more amused than angry

“There are a lot of questions that need answering,” Reyes said at last. “So many that I’m not even sure where to begin.”

The new Genji laughed. It had an unnerving tinny quality to it and McCree was once more reminded of the hell that his brother had inflicted on him.

The very same brother that was staring at McCree with an unnerving, hawk-like focus.

“I am Genji. Or perhaps I should say, I am the _older_ Genji. This is my brother Hanzo.”

“He looks like _father_ ,” McCree’s Genji spat.

That seemed to snap Hanzo out and he turned his head slowly and dangerously toward McCree’s Genji. He said nothing but his mouth was pulled into a frown. Then he looked away.

“I can see that,” the older Genji agreed. “I’ve been trying to get him to dye his hair for the past few years but he won’t have it.”

“Where did you come from?” Reyes cut in.

The two brothers looked at each other. “Caution,” Hanzo urged. His voice was strangely quiet. “Until we can determine if this was caused by a _temporal_ anomaly or simply an interdimensional one, we need to be cautious about how we answer.”

Both Genjis huffed in near unison. “I am fairly certain that this is temporal.”

“Are you certain?” Hanzo pressed. His eyes drifted to McCree again as if he was unable to help himself. “How certain?”

“You killed me,” McCree’s Genji cut in. “You were ordered by The Elders to cut me down and so you blindly obeyed. Blackwatch managed to scrape enough of me together to pour me into this metal suit.”

“Ah,” the older Genji said. “I remember that.” He gestured toward McCree’s Genji as he turned to his brother. “That at least is a point in the temporal column because I remember _that_.”

Hanzo didn’t look entirely convinced. “I still recommend caution, even more so since this is now clearly, in some form, a temporal anomaly.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the older Genji said, the picture of a willful younger brother. “The butterfly effect, and all.”

“So you have the potential to tell us the future,” Reyes said hopefully.

Both Shimadas fell silent.

“Fascinating,” Moira said and scribbled something down.

“It doesn’t work like that,” the future Genji said softly. “As much as we want to tell you. We simply don’t know what might change.”

Reyes snorted. “I never thought I’d see the day,” he said dryly. “Genji being responsible. How did you come to be here? Or can you not answer that, too?”

The brothers exchanged glances. Hanzo’s eyes still drifted to McCree. There was something there and McCree itched to know.

“I went to find my brother,” old Genji said slowly. “He was hiding on the cliffs so I went to get him. Then there was a light and suddenly we were here.”

McCree looked at Reyes. It was clear that there was a lot of information redacted.

“You said that you were in mourning,” Reyes pointed out.

Hanzo’s chin lifted a little. “We are,” he agreed. “I was setting up a small remembrance shrine.” He exchanged looks with his brother. Or, the version of his brother from his own time.

“This is bound to get real confusing real fast,” McCree observed, grinding the cigar between his teeth.

The older version of Genji looked at him. “My teammates have taken to calling me ‘Blue’ lately,” he said and gestured to his lights and hair. “If that is easier…?”

“Blue and Hanzo,” Reyes said a little sourly. “Works for me. How do we get you back home? Or are you stuck here on a permanent basis?”

Almost in unison, the brothers shrugged.

* * *

“You will scrub your skin off,” someone told Hanzo. “Come here.”

The bloodstains were still there. He could still see the phantom streaks of red swirling down the drain, could still feel the sticky, itchy feeling of it on his skin. It was still there under is nails, in his cuticles, ground and dried into the tiny cracks and scars and callouses in his skin.

It was there and it wasn’t, both visible and not as Hanzo blinked and blinked and blinked through blurry eyes.

Shock. It was shock and survivor’s guilt and all of it.

Shock…and grief.

 _I’m sorry_ , Lúcio had said as he rolled a gurney down the ramp of the drop ship. As if it was his fault. _Maybe if we had gotten there sooner_.

_If we had gotten there sooner!_

What they meant was _if Hanzo hadn’t taken the left_.

He remembered pausing at the junction. Left, or right? Left, or right? His points of reference had been on the rooftops and they were invisible down here in the back alleys of some small town in Mexico.

If he had not wasted time going left, going into a dead-end alley and having to back-track then McCree would still be here.

 _Might_ still be here.

That’s not what they meant, though. Lúcio had meant well, hadn’t meant to imply that it was anyone’s fault. Baptiste had watched Hanzo with a bleak look in his eyes. He wouldn’t lie to Hanzo so he hadn’t said anything past _I’m sorry._ His big hand was a warm spot on Hanzo’s shoulder.

 _I’m_ so sorry _, Hanzo_.

Baptiste was one of the few that knew their secret so he knew what this loss meant to Hanzo. By now he was sure that the rest of the team knew or figured.

He had stood beside Hanzo as they watched Angela solemnly receive the gurney. There was a lump beneath the bloodstained sheets. A mesa formed by a hat placed on an unmoving chest; a gorge formed between that and the upturned rim.

 _Everyone goes in the Gorge at the end_ , McCree used to laugh bitterly.

It was Baptiste now that covered Hanzo’s hands with his own, gently rinsed off the last of the soap, and turned off the water. “Come on,” he said, easing Hanzo away. Against Baptiste’s cold hands, Hanzo could feel just how badly he was shaking. “Let’s get some food into you.”

The base was quiet; the mess was empty. Baptiste still took him into a quiet corner where food was set out for Hanzo. It reminded him of the time that McCree had gotten Baptiste to help him with a romantic date night. Their leave had been denied—Talon had been extremely active lately, enough that they couldn’t afford to spare two highly skilled operatives—and Hanzo had not let disappointment cloud his expression.

Duty came first, after all. They had both agreed on that.

But McCree had gotten Baptiste to help him make a special dinner. They had made a spread of food and had found an empty corner of the base to have a private picnic where they could pretend that they had taken the anniversary trip that they had been planning.

A sob caught in his throat and Baptiste let him cling to his arm tight enough that it must have been more than uncomfortable. There would probably be bruises but Baptiste didn’t complain.

He just let Hanzo shatter into a million pieces.

* * *

“Watch your step,” McCree sneered. “Don’t want to fall off the edge.”

Unnervingly, Hanzo didn’t seem fazed. He was back in that near-catatonic state but at least he wasn’t staring at McCree. Instead he was staring blankly over the sea as if searching for something.

“Hey,” McCree barked. He took a deep breath of smoke. It scratched one itch that crawled beneath his skin; the other seemed to be ignoring him. “You hear me, Shimada?”

Hanzo very slowly turned his head to McCree. “I heard you.”

Sneering, McCree spat on the ground between them. “You hearin’ what I’m sayin’, _Shimada?_ You take one step toward Genji and I’ll gut you myself.”

There was something strange in Hanzo’s eyes. McCree had seen that look before, that particular cocktail of despair and its resulting exhaustion. It was the look of someone that was nearly broken by something.

In Deadlock that was always a good sign of someone susceptible to a little bit of smooth talking. He had the feeling that despite that haunted look in his eyes, Hanzo wouldn’t fall for it.

Not that McCree had any particular interest in that. He spat on the ground again and swiped at his lips with the back of his left hand.

Hanzo’s eyes locked on it, lingered over the tattoo. There something there—an answer to an unasked question weighted in his dark eyes but it wasn’t a question that McCree wanted to ask or have answered.

“Fuck you lookin’ at?” he snarled.

Very slowly Hanzo looked away, his eyes finding the horizon once more. “I used to sit here often,” he said faintly, so softly that the sea wind nearly stole his words away. “Somehow even the sky looks different now. The wind smells different. The company…” he trailed off.

It sounded like a very weak joke.

McCree sneered and ashed his cigar, gritting his teeth when the wind blew it back on him, dotting his dark clothes with pale spots. It would smear if he tried to brush it off. “You? Have company?”

If Hanzo was insulted, he didn’t show it. He lifted the cigarette to his lips and took a deep breath; when he exhaled, the pale grey smoke rising from his nose and lips made him look like a dragon. “I would ask the same thing. I’m not much of a conversationalist. My partner would always insist otherwise.”

“That who died?” McCree asked, curious despite himself. “What, they commit suicide?” he laughed. “Couldn’t stand being with a kin-killer?”

For a long moment Hanzo didn’t say anything and McCree wondered if he had finally struck something in Hanzo. “He was shot,” Hanzo said at last. “On a mission. I couldn’t get him to the medics in time.”

“Shit happens,” McCree began.

“And everyone goes in the Gorge at the end,” Hanzo finished. He took another long breath of his cigarette and exhaled another long plume of smoke and didn’t seem to notice the gobsmacked expression on McCree’s face.

* * *

Hanzo sat at the edge of the cliff, his legs dangling. Below him, the sea roared.

So did the dragons, wild ululations of grief. They built and built and built; Hanzo’s grief fed theirs and their screams fed Hanzo’s and on and on until it couldn’t be held beneath his skin.

“Hanzo, you need to stop this.”

He could hear the distant rumble of a storm; the dragons screamed their grief at the sky and sea and Hanzo was with them, screaming with them even though his body remained still and quiet.

“Hanzo, please.”

Another voice said, “stop. Genji, stop. Let him grieve in peace.”

“This isn’t grieving—whatever this is it isn’t…”

Eventually the voices faded.

Everything faded.

Hanzo was adrift in the sea of his grief and here the waves roared.

* * *

“Reyes.”

The Blackwatch Commander paused and turned. It was the future-Genji—Blue. “May I have a word with you? Alone?”

Reyes’ Genji looked suspicious, _shuriken_ clicking into place in his knuckles before clicking back into their tracks; a nervous tick. Reyes knew that despite that, Genji could still draw his sword faster than most would expect.

“Conference room,” Reyes decided. “Genji, stand post.”

The ninja looked like he was ready to protest but said nothing—a testament of his trust in Reyes.

Blue sat down more decorously than Reyes expected him to; Reyes took the spot across from him and placed his shotguns on the table between them.

“I feel like I should be hurt but I’m not; you have no reason to trust me.” Blue laughed a little bitterly. There was a story there but Reyes held himself back from asking. “I wanted to give you…a word of advice. Something I always wanted to say but didn’t know how to. By the time I was able to…I couldn’t.”

Reyes nodded. “If its—”

“Not directly related to future events,” Blue told him. “Hanzo is right; it’s too dangerous. No matter how much I want to tell you everything.” He opened his visor and put down his helmet. His muddy eyes were sincere and full of a lifetime of regret. “I wanted to tell you that I trust you.”

Surprised, Reyes blinked. “That’s it?”

Blue laughed. “That’s it. I trust you—and you have my loyalty. Especially in these days, in Blackwatch where everything hurt and my hatred was what fueled me, I trusted you. I would follow you into the fires of hell—and some of our missions would qualify—because I trusted you. Sometimes I wouldn’t speak; I wouldn’t complain. It wasn’t because I was in pain or I was sullen; it was because I knew that you would lead us out. The first boot down and the last boot out.”

For a long moment they were quiet. “You said _trusted_ ,” Reyes pointed out very quietly.

Blue’s eyes were serious, piercing in their intensity. “I cannot tell you more,” Blue said just as quietly. “That is cheating. I wish I could.”

They fell into silence again. “You did well for yourself,” Reyes said at last, leaning back in his chair. “I can see it and I wish that I could ask but…I’m glad.”

“I am too.” There was a wistfulness in Blue’s voice that sounded a lot like, _I wish you were here to see it_.

But Reyes could read between the lines. He nodded once.

* * *

“We can’t trust them,” McCree argued. “How can you trust a _murderer?_ ”

“I trust _you_ , don’t I?” Reyes asked evenly. He watched Genji out of the corner of his eyes.  “Genji, what are _your_ thoughts?”

Genji blinked like a jungle cat. His _shuriken_ popped into his grip and then back into their mechanical tracks. “I do not know what to think,” he said at last. “I am confused why my future self might not kill him on sight.”

“Don’t fucking blame you,” McCree growled, lighting up his cigar despite the disgusted look that Moira leveled at him. He took a deep drag. “I vote we kick him over the edge or just give ‘im to Moira. Let her have her fun with him.”

Reyes grunted. “Your opinion has been noted. Genji?”

“I will follow your orders, Commander,” Genji said after a long pause.

He raised his brows. “And if I order you to make nice with him?”

Genji regarded him. “I will not kill him unless he acts.”

“I don’t think he’s capable of it,” Moira observed. “His condition has been getting worse.”

“Do not underestimate him. That was my first mistake.”

McCree took another deep drag. “I can’t promise nothin’,” he growled when Reyes looked at him.

“I find myself agreeing with McCree for once,” Moira drawled. “Imagine what I could learn from him. The anomalies in his arm and leg match the anomalies in—”

“Do not mess with them,” Genji said flatly. “The spirits will defend themselves.”

Reyes sighed. “For now, they will stay in incarceration. Separate and under 24-hour surveillance. I’ll speak with the Strike Commander and see how he wants to handle this.” McCree stopped himself from spitting when he saw the look Reyes gave him. “We need to keep this under wraps as much as possible. Might be that we need to dispose of them quietly somewhere. They’re right—knowledge of future events is dangerous.”

“Only if you aim for the future they’re from,” Moira pointed out. “Imagine knowing the mistakes you’re about to make and being able to fix it. Or knowing exactly what will happen. Imagine the information they can give us.”

“Noted,” Reyes said. “Dismissed.” Genji and Moira didn’t seem reluctant to leave and stood quickly. “McCree. I’d like a word.” Reyes didn’t miss Genji’s sympathetic look at McCree as he sat back in his seat with a grunt. “Engage lock, blackout protocol.” He waited for the chime to sound that his office was sealed and turned toward McCree. “So.”

McCree looked away to blow a long plume of smoke in the air. “‘So’ what?”

“I got another report from Medical,” Reyes said, pushing the file toward McCree.

“And?”

Reyes sighed. “They’re recommending retirement from active duty.”

“Ain’t happening.”

“And I ‘ _ain’t_ ’ putting a team at risk,” Reyes snapped back. “We need to consider our next options.”

McCree leaned forward. “Way I remember it,” he growled. “Our deal was you use me until I was done, weren’t that your words? I be your pet dog until the day someone put a bullet through my head—or I go to prison.”

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Reyes sighed. “That _was_ the plan. But you’ve done your duty now.”

“Have I?” McCree demanded. “And now, what—are you going to retire me to a farm upstate now that I’ve outlived my use?”

“Yeah, I am,” Reyes snapped back. “You’re a _kid_ , McCree.”

“I’m legal!”

Reyes ignored him and continued. “You have a life and a future ahead of you. One that doesn’t involve gangs or Spec Ops. Ever thought of that?”

This time McCree didn’t let Reyes’ glare stop him from spitting on the floor. “I’ll stop when someone puts a bullet in me,” he promised. “Not sooner.” He keyed in the override to the door and stomped out.

Groaning, Reyes scrubbed a hand over his face. He could have stopped McCree from leaving but he had half expected the outcome of their talk anyway.

“ _What a testy little shit_ ,” Nox grumbled from the panel. The door slid shut and locked once more. “ _He didn’t need to hit the buttons so hard_.”

Reyes let his head fall into his hands. “You can’t feel pain, what do you care?”

“ _I care that I might need to get someone to repair the damage while also making sure that they’re not snooping around,_ ” Nox said primly. “ _What will you do about the kid?_ ”

Sighing, Reyes let himself fall back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “Nox, forge some documents for Medical. Tell them that we’re transferring to another Watchpoint and that McCree will remain behind when our work there is complete. He’ll be a…fuck I don’t know, some kind of fucking trainer or something. That’ll keep Medical off our back for another year or so.”

“ _Time was that people did their own forgeries_ ,” Nox sniffed, feigning insult. “ _I’ll make something up. And what about our temporally-displaced guests?_ ”

Reyes groaned. “Fuck, them too. I want to keep an eye on them. Personally.”

“ _What Watchpoint do you have in mind?_ ”

“Fuck,” Reyes groaned again. “Let’s take Grand Mesa for now. They got a good think tank there and a decent training grounds.”

“ _And the altitude? It will put too much strain on_ —”

Reyes swore. As if on cue for his incredibly shitty day, his comm beeped. “Prepare the documents anyway with preparation to change the destinations. Send Medical a note that discussions with McCree are underway to ease him into retirement or whatever bullshit sounds better.”

” _Your brand of bullshit is usually better than mine_ ,” Nox said dryly. “ _I will create something and send it to you for review before I submit it to Medical. I will also make a list of potential bases to ‘hide’ your ingrate._ ”

“Thanks, Nox.”

“ _Remember_ ,” Nox said as he made to leave. “ _You brought this on yourself._ ”

Reyes swore as the door opened. “ _Thanks,_ Nox.”

The AI laughed. “ _Anytime, Commander. Always a pleasure working with you._ ”


	2. Chapter 2

The Mission had gone wrong.

Everything was burned because Hanzo had had a dissociative episode in the middle of cooking. Now smoke had filled the kitchen and there was no time to fix everything and get rid of that acrid smell and…

And…

And everything was ruined.

And Hanzo could hear the sound of spurs.

“Hm,” Hanzo heard McCree say. He walked past the kitchen and then he could hear the sound of the windows opening, the sound of McCree’s gear bag being set down. His spurs jingled as McCree pulled off his boots and, in his socks, McCree walked back toward the kitchen. “Ah, there you are, sweetness,” he said as if he hadn’t seen Hanzo standing like some kind of terrible gargoyle over the remains of their dinner. “Come give me some sugar?” McCree wrapped his arms around Hanzo’s waist and pressed a whiskery kiss to his cheek, missing and catching his ear instead.

Hanzo shuddered and tried to keep himself from leaning back into McCree’s warmth. He was still sweaty from his mission and frankly he reeked, but his arms held him just tight enough and his heartbeat was strong and steady against Hanzo’s back.

Some nights when he was really, really drunk he would press an ear to it and put a hand on his own heart and imagine that it beat at the same time. The romantic in him would imagine something silly like they were meant to be together, that they were inexplicably tied together in some way; the realist in him knew better, that heartbeats didn’t synch up because they were relegated by a person’s body and not their feelings.

He still liked the thought, though.

McCree pressed another whiskery kiss to the side of Hanzo’s head. “Were you making dinner?” he asked. Hanzo couldn’t open his mouth, feeling like it was wired shut, so he nodded jerkily instead. “Aw, sweet.” He gently began rocking them from side to side as if to the rhythm of a song that only he could hear.

“I burned it,” Hanzo managed to croak out.

“A shame,” McCree said lightly as if Hanzo’s failure was of no consequence to him. “How about we clean up and we can go out in town? Or we can stay in and make dinner together?” He chuckled and turned his head, gave a theatric sniff. “Whew, I reek. Come on. Let’s make sure everything’s turned off, toss this in the sink to soak, and hit the wash racks. I think I pulled something during the mission and could use a second set of hands to help me out?”

He continued to sway them from side to side, a gentle motion that sometimes soothed Hanzo. His hands were shaking and he rested them on McCree’s where they wrapped around his waist. McCree pressed another kiss to his ear and squeezed him just a little tighter before relaxing.

“I burned it,” Hanzo managed to croak.

McCree hummed a little snippet of a song and Hanzo could nearly hear the words, sung low and husky in McCree’s voice— _tú eres mi sol, mi amor, mi único sol_.

“It happens, sweet,” McCree murmured and squeezed him again. “You already gave me your heart. Ain’t no need for you to beat yourself up any more for little old me.” His voice dropped. “Believe me. That gift…that gift is more than I had ever hoped to receive.”

* * *

Baptiste found Angela drunk as a skunk in her office. He watched her from the doorway for a moment before stepping in and closing it behind him. “You’re not worried about Hanzo?”

Limply, staring up at the ceiling, Angela shook her head.

“I haven’t been able to find him anywhere,” Baptiste observed. “I’m worried.”

“He didn’t jump off a cliff or run away, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she slurred. She turned her head toward Baptiste, her cheeks flushed with alcohol and her eyes hazy. They were red-rimmed from prolonged weeping.

With a sigh, Baptiste cleared a corner of her cluttered desk and sat down. He didn’t try to stop her when she took another long gulp straight from the bottle—he was the medic on duty anyway. When she offered him some, he pretended to take a drink and handed it back.

“Liar,” she laughed bitterly, without looking away from the pitted surface of the drop ceiling above her.

“I wish I had gotten there sooner,” Baptiste admitted after a long moment of silence. “I wish I could have done something. But that was a gut shot. I’m not sure I could have done anything.”

Angela hummed. Then she turned to him so suddenly that he was afraid that she’d fall out of her chair. He caught her and made a mental note to make sure she ate more; he was strong but she was still so thin, so light.

“Do you…do you want to see a secret?” she asked. “I’m sick of it. I’m so sick of it, Tise.”

Baptiste steadied her and found the cap for the liquor, sealing it tight, and tucked it away in its spot in her desk—the left-hand side, bottommost drawer, tucked in the back behind the rack of hanging folders with everyone’s medical histories. She had once joked to him that it was because just looking at the state of the folders drove her to drinking, never mind the contents of them.

“Do you need assistance walking?” Baptiste asked.

Angela blinked up at him. Her lips quivered but now it seemed like she was ready to cry in relief.

He wondered what kind of secret could weigh on her so badly.

“Yes, please,” she said and tucked a hand into the elbow he offered her.

* * *

Shimada was almost catatonic again, legs tucked beneath his body as he stared blankly into some middle distance.

McCree gritted his teeth when he saw that the last plate of food that he had brought was untouched. “Hey,” he barked. Shimada didn’t move, not even when McCree kicked sharply at the door.

Grumbling, he pulled out the old tray of food and set down the new one, sliding the panel shut again. He found Genji at Blue’s cell, further down the hall. Both of them looked up at him as he carried the full tray back.

“He’s not eating, is he?” Blue asked.

“Ain’t my problem if he decides to starve himself,” McCree growled. Genji said nothing but his hands weren’t in fists on his thighs, the mechanisms that brought up his _shuriken_ from the tracks in his arm weren’t moving.

Blue looked down the hall toward Hanzo’s cell. He sighed.

“What is he mourning?” Genji asked at last.

“Don’t matter,” McCree growled.

At the same time, Blue said simply, “A mission went poorly.” Blue eyed McCree but said nothing more, his expression just as guarded as Genji’s at his most difficult.

“Why would I not want to kill my brother?” Genji asked Blue. “He made me into this.”

For a long moment Blue looked at his past counterpart as if deciding how to answer. McCree lit up his cigar again and took a deep drag.

“What would it fix?” Blue asked at last. Spitting steam from his vents—a sign of his annoyance—Genji got up and left.

McCree watched him leave. “I don’t buy it,” he told Blue who shrugged.

“What don’t you buy?” Blue asked with a serenity that McCree wasn’t used to.

He took another long drag of his cigar and ashed it into Hanzo’s food. “That bastard deserves death.”

“He wishes for it,” Blue agreed. “Or he did, once. He may long for it again. It’s a high like you wouldn’t believe.”

McCree watched Blue closely. He exhaled a long plume of blue-grey smoke and watched as it shimmered in Blue’s running lights. “So you’re keeping him alive to torture him.”

“I kept him alive because he is my brother,” Blue replied. “And because I have hope.”

He scoffed. “Hope? In what?”

Blue didn’t answer. McCree turned and stomped away to report to Reyes.

* * *

Reyes paid a personal visit to the two brothers from the future. He lingered by Blue’s cell for a moment before continuing on toward Hanzo’s.

“McCree says you’re not eating,” Reyes said without preamble. He looked down at the old tray and found that it had been picked at, so at least he was eating _something_. “It’s not much, I’m afraid. Blackwatch doesn’t get the best fare.”

Hanzo didn’t say anything but turned his head very slightly to look at Reyes. Some days were better than others, it seemed. Then he blinked and his entire demeanor changed. “Commander Reyes,” he greeted. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

Bending, Reyes switched out the trays of food and set the old one aside. He pulled over a short stool and sat in front of Hanzo’s cell. “I’d like some information. Of the past, not the future.”

“You want to know why I killed Genji,” Hanzo said. “Or perhaps the movement of the Shimada _-gumi_ —you did not say _whose_ past you wanted to ask about.”

Reyes chuckled. “If I let Genji loose on them…?”

“I suspect that you already know the answer to that,” Hanzo pointed out. He looked down at the tray of food but didn’t make a move toward it.

“It’s not poisoned,” Reyes assured him. If Hanzo was coherent enough to eat, then he wanted to encourage it. Tugging the tray back out, he used the spoon (why the fuck would anyone need a spoon for mashed potatoes and gravy? Perhaps that was a silly question) to take a bite of the potatoes.

He nearly spat it back out.

“Damn ingrate,” he growled. “He poured salt in the potatoes.”

“Not just the potatoes, I suspect,” Hanzo said far too calmly. “He was probably thorough in his sabotage. Habaneros in the gravy perhaps; or perhaps something hotter. I remember—” He cut himself off abruptly.

“You knew him,” Reyes said.

It wasn’t a question but Hanzo still nodded in confirmation. “I did,” he said, suddenly sounding very tired.

Reyes was tempted to ask how. Why. There were so many questions he wanted to ask. About Overwatch, about Blackwatch; about the Crisis and its aftermath. About his team. “Do you know how you get back?”

“I wouldn’t know that,” Hanzo replied. “It is my present, not my past.”

Reyes made a face. “True,” he agreed and rubbed his chin in thought. He changed gears. “I’ll get you another plate of food—this time one that isn’t sabotaged. We’re moving bases soon.”

For a long moment Hanzo watched him. Reyes wondered what he was like at chess or poker and wanted to shake his head. At this rate he would fucking accept him into his team.

The thought was an intriguing one even though he had some inkling of what will happen. Between Genji and McCree, Hanzo would end up dead. Not to mention, he had a feeling that Blue’s unnerving calm around his brother was _not_ because Reyes had him join their elite group.

No, there were other pieces missing and Reyes couldn’t ask—both because Hanzo wouldn’t know and Blue wouldn’t answer.

Probably.

“Why are you telling me this?” Hanzo asked at last.

“Because you’re coming with us,” Reyes replied. “And you would be able to walk around so long as you consent to our AI monitoring you at all times.”

Hanzo watched him again. “That isn’t new to me. I would consent but you may have more difficulty convincing Genji.”

“Is stubbornness a Shimada trait?” Reyes joked.

“More than you’d think,” Hanzo replied. It was almost a joke.

Reyes nodded and stood, nudging the stool away from the door. “I’ll get you another plate of food and then I’ll be back. Monitoring will be done with a microchip in the back of your neck. You okay with that?”

“It’s not new to me,” Hanzo repeated. “You’ll find another chip in my neck when you place your implant.” He hesitated. “I would caution against who you trust with that information.”

Hanzo was telling him something without words and Reyes couldn’t tell if it was a warning.

He nodded once, picked up Hanzo’s old tray, and left. “Nox,” he said at the doorway to the brig. “Create a transcript and send it to my private terminal. And add McCree to latrine duty for two weeks. Tell him that if he wants to be on anyone’s shit list, it can be on Sanitation’s.” The terminal chimed in confirmation.

* * *

Baptiste let Angela drag him along to one of the outdoor supply sheds where she loaded up a large bucket with tools: a trowel, a stiff-bristled brush, a spray bottle with water, heavy-duty gardening gloves. She handed him a shovel with a strangely bleak look in her eyes and he accepted it without comment.

She took his arm again, bumping into him as she stumbled through the garden. They saw Lena who gestured to the tree she stood beside.

“I have a better spot,” Angela said and Lena was kind enough to not comment on her drunkenness. “Come on, you can help. Go grab a shovel.”

When Lena looked at Baptiste he shrugged and they waited for Lena to return. She also had a pick slung over a shoulder. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt,” she explained though nobody had asked.

Angela led them down the narrow path toward the beach. Eventually Baptiste handed his shovel to Lena and scooped Angela up in one arm, carrying her down the meandering path to the shore. She sat down heavily on one of the rocks and swiped at her eyes.

“Not here,” she assured them. “Just…I need a minute.”

They set down their burdens and Baptiste tugged at his shirt, fanning himself with it. Lena looked around. “Hard to believe we were just out here last weekend,” she said faintly.

Baptiste could sympathize. He was having flashbacks to the Crisis all over again. People he had just seen were gone by the next day, their fragile lives shattered beneath the onslaught of metal and fire and choking ash. He took a deep breath; Angela was crying quietly.

He could only imagine what Hanzo was feeling. Wherever he and Genji had vanished through, he hoped that they were okay.

“It just feels so weird,” Lena continued, staring out at the blue, blue ocean. “The world just continues on and…”

Reaching out, Baptiste patted her back. “I know.” He did.

“Thanks,” Lena said quietly.

The sun was still bright, still hot in the middle of summer. The sky was still blue, the waves still crashing against the shore. Somewhere below the waters was an old concrete pier, buried beneath the rising waves. Here the air was filled with the smell of salt and water and life as the sea continued to batter at land.

Life moved on; so must they.

* * *

“Hold still,” Reyes cautioned as he held the device up to the back of Hanzo’s neck. It showed a scan of his neck, muscles, and spine with a darker white rectangle that marked the other chip that Hanzo had warned him about.

A scan by Nox traced the registration, which was coded to when the chip was implanted and the location where it was first put in: 2077, Watchpoint: Gibraltar.

Reyes said nothing as he adjusted the gun, aiming the reticle just below the previous chip. It hissed; Hanzo flinched. After a brief burst of golden biotic light, it was done. Just to double-check, Reyes scanned it again: 2069, Watchpoint: Gibraltar.

“AI, confirm,” Reyes said.

“ _Confirmed reading,_ ” Nox replied from the device in Reyes’ hand. Inexplicably, Hanzo’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “ _Hello, Shimada-_ san.”

“Hello, Nox,” Hanzo murmured as if greeting an old friend.

There was a long moment of silence. “You’ve met Nox.” Hanzo didn’t answer.

“ _May I call you Shimada-_ san?” Nox asked as of unbothered. He probably wasn’t.

“You may,” Hanzo agreed. “You may also call me ‘Hanzo’ in the presence of my brother to reduce confusion.”

“ _Noted_.”

Reyes looked at the screen as Nox compiled the data that was taken from the scan of Hanzo’s other chip. It marched across the screen as a marquee:

            Name: Shimada Hanzo

            Age: 39

            Function: Sniper (Archer)

            Base Assigned: Gibraltar

            Physician: Ziegler, Augustin

            Blood Type: AB+

            Organ Donor: Y

            Allergies: Amoxicillin, dairy

            Pre-Existing Conditions: double-amputee

Nox repeated the information while Reyes thought. Who was Augustin Ziegler? Were they related to Angela or was it just coincidence? What did Overwatch look like? Blackwatch?

In the end it didn’t matter. Knowing the future was a dangerous thing.

The screen blinked as Nox opened a window:

            Delete?

            Y / N

Reyes thumbed “N” and lowered the display. He traded glances with Hanzo who was watching him calmly. “You have a history with McCree,” he realized. “That’s why you shut down.”

“I do,” Hanzo said levelly. Something caught in his voice and everything fell in place.

 _We have been…in mourning_.

Reyes nodded. _Until the day someone put a bullet through my head_ , McCree’s voice echoed in his head mockingly. “I’ll be back with clothes for you and I’ll take you to the wash racks to get cleaned up.”

Hanzo bowed slightly. “Thank you, Commander.”

Burying his feelings into a tight little ball in his throat, Reyes did a neat about-face and left.

* * *

“How?” Genji demanded.

Blue only regarded him with a patience that reminded Genji too much of The Elders. “Time, and a lot of patience,” he said at last.

“Patience?” Genji snarled. “Patience in what?”

“It was not _my_ patience, but the patience of others,” Blue said with a little laugh.

Genji paced but Blue remained still, sitting as if ready to meditate. “Are you not in pain?” Genji asked instead. “You no longer have feeds running through you. Tubes everywhere.”

“I received better healthcare. We got a new insurance plan. Better dental, too.”

It was a joke; their entire lower jaw had been replaced and most of the teeth on their upper jaw.

Genji hissed. “How did we find Hanzo? Why didn’t we find him sooner?”

Blue turned his head. “A friend told us.”

“Who?” Genji demanded. “I will ask them now.”

“It took them many years to hunt him down.”

“Then I will make them start now,” Genji snarled and dashed into Blue’s face. “I will not be denied.”

Blue watched him levelly. “I don’t remember being this impatient,” he observed. “I wonder if this is what Hanzo felt like when we were children.”

With an inarticulate roar of rage, Genji drew his _wakizashi_ ; Blue deflected it with his own. “Tell me,” Genji demanded.

“Does his grief not move you?” Blue wondered.

“Let him grieve,” Genji snapped. “Whoever hurt him so, let him be hurt a thousand times more. Let the grief fester and rot in his heart until it consumes him. I wish him to suffer.”

Blue hummed and fluidly dodged out of the way as Genji dashed toward him again. “And who was it that held our aching hands after training?” he asked. “Who was it that curled up with us after a nightmare? Who chased away the demons in our closet? Who covered for us when we snuck in and out of the grounds?”

“ _Who tried to kill us?_ ” Genji roared back, blade and eyes sparking with green energy. His dragon writhed around beneath skin and armor alike, swirling toward the hand that held his blade.

Then he was on the ground, his _wakizashi_ flung out of his grip. Blue’s dragon spirit, ideally the same as Genji’s but somehow not, curled around his body and perched on his shoulder. It stared down impassively at Genji who sat up quickly, staring at it with wide eyes.

He remembered his dragon in Blackwatch. It had been like shattered glass; it had hurt to summon. That pain had faded with time and the patience of others. He really did owe a lot of people so much, and made a mental note to himself to make a list when he got back to his own time. There were a lot of people that he had to thank.

Blue reached up and stroked its neck fondly before it disappeared, sinking beneath his skin. The afterimage of it was burned into his armor for a brief moment before it, too, disappeared.

“ _Are you done causing trouble?_ ” Nox asked from a nearby terminal.

“I’ve only just begun,” Genji snarled.

Blue turned his head. “Yes, Nox. I apologize.”

“ _But you’re not sorry, are you?_ ” the AI sniffed but his voice was modulated toward amusement. “ _Reyes wants to speak with the both of you. Small Conference Room Foxtrot_.”

Growling, Genji snatched up his _wakizashi_ and sheathed it. Giving Blue a poisonous glare, he stalked out the door. “Nox, was I always this bitchy?”

“ _Always._ ”

Laughing, Blue stepped into the hall and followed his younger counterpart. “Thank you, Nox.”

* * *

“You can’t keep beating yourself up over this,” Genji implored. “You know that it wouldn’t have made a difference—and you know that he wouldn’t want you killing yourself like this.”

Hanzo stared out over the roaring seas. His legs dangled over the edge.

Behind them, the base should have been loud with the sounds of celebration for a mission gone well. Instead it was silent, echoing with grief.

In mourning.

“ _Hanzo_ ,” Genji hissed.

He began to laugh. It was a broken, bitter sound as brittle as shattering glass. He laughed harder, louder but he didn’t know what he was laughing at.

It hurt to cry. His hands were still raw.

“I got it,” Baptiste said.

“It’s okay,” Genji murmured back. “I can handle it.”

Maybe they said something more. Hanzo could no longer hear them. He could just remember warm hands in his and a press of dry lips against the side of his head.

A warm body pressed against his, a secret moment between the two of them. McCree’s voice, raspier as he tried to keep quiet. “Meet you later? Same place?”

“We live together, fool,” Hanzo had said but tipped his head back for a kiss.

McCree had pulled one of Hanzo’s hand to his heart and beneath his palm Hanzo could feel it pounding, or imagined that he could. “Don’t do anything stupid, _mi corazón_.”

“I should say the same to you,” Hanzo had retorted. “I’ll see you afterwards.”

“Same time, same place.” There had been something else in his eyes but when he blinked it had gone away. Hanzo kissed him again and then they parted; Hanzo went to set up his gear and get ready for his drop point.

Light gathered around him. He opened his eyes as he felt the tug on his legs like a hundred hands pulling him. Distantly he could hear a voice saying something.

He was pulled toward the edge, toward a swirling vortex of bluish light. Hands wrapped around him but with a final heave the force pulled him over the edge.

Hanzo fell, was falling, and then he wasn’t.

* * *

“Hey!”

Hanzo tried to keep from showing how startled he was. It took him a moment to realize that the outburst was out of greeting rather than alarm.

The person that talked was a caricature of a person...anachronistic, perhaps. Perhaps more accurately Hanzo would describe him out of the cover of a cheap romance novel: worn jeans, a flannel, a hat on his head. A single leather glove was thrust into his belt; his other hand was a metal prosthesis with a stylized skull.

The man laughed, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the counter. “Well look who it is.”

Hanzo tried not to frown. He said nothing, deciding that silence was probably the best answer.

“Hanzo, this is my friend McCree,” Genji said, coming up behind Hanzo unexpectedly. There was an odd note in his voice as he introduced them. “We’ve served together for a long time in Blackwatch. McCree, this is—”

“Yeah,” McCree interrupted. There was something in his voice, a subtext that Hanzo didn’t understand. Perhaps it was merely wishful thinking, but he didn’t sound  _angry_. “Yeah, I remember.”

So he knew. Hanzo bowed and when he looked up, McCree’s smile had dimmed somewhat but it was still present on his face. It looked almost…relieved.

Almost as if McCree was  _happy_ to see him. Not eager, as if he were excited to put a bullet between Hanzo’s eyes. Not angry, as if he had been hanging to a grudge for a long time and was ready to unleash everything on Hanzo.

Not vindictive, as if he was thinking of the pain that Genji had gone through while getting used to his new body.

Happy. Honestly happy.

“Sit down,” he urged. “Come on, I’ll make you a plate.”

Genji seemed just as confused, looking back and forth between the two of them. “I see that I leave you in good hands,” he said at last. “I will be back, Hanzo; I must speak with the base commander.”

And so Hanzo was left alone with a stranger.

Perhaps it was only a one-sided kind of strangeness. McCree was no doubt very much aware of Hanzo. What he had done.

He watched McCree who  _turned his back on him_. A part of him was displeased, angered that McCree would be so careless around someone as dangerous as he was. It couldn’t be ignorance but perhaps stupidity.

Perhaps Hanzo was simply looking too much into this.

McCree dug around in the drawers for a ladle and a rice paddle, portioned out rice and stew into two bowls. He dug around again for two spoons, inspected them for cleanliness, and walked toward the table, gesturing for Hanzo to come over.

“You just get off the plane?” he asked sympathetically. “Come on, your hunger’s gonna kick in soon. I wonder if it’s the altitude or something that delays those things. Never cared for it. Prefer hypertrain when I can manage it, but I can’t always manage it.” He laughed as if it was some kind of inside joke. “Sit. Join me.”

Feeling quite out of place, Hanzo slowly sat down in the seat across from McCree and looked down at the stew dubiously, unsure if his stomach was up to a spicy American stew.

McCree chuckled. “Don’t worry it’s not poisoned,” he assured Hanzo, misunderstanding his hesitation. Then he laughed again, as if at an inside joke that Hanzo wasn’t privy to. “And I didn’t pour salt into it this time.”

* * *

The old stone of the subterranean Blackwatch base, though veneered with metal and fiberglass paneling, hid old ghosts. Hanzo remembered the darkness that lingered beyond the soft golden light of McCree’s lantern, threatening to close in on them. It was like cave diving, the feeling of pressure and the power of the ocean closing in on you.

He could feel the weight of years and years of strength…and neglect.

The air was musty and Hanzo imagined that he could hear things moving in the darkness. Maybe he could; most likely it was just the distant echo of their footsteps in halls long forgotten by everyone on base.

Everyone except McCree and Genji.

McCree led him with purpose now—it wasn’t just wandering anymore. They entered one of the abandoned wings of Medical and somehow Hanzo felt like he was in some kind of horror movie, seeing all of those empty gurneys lingering in place as if the ones using them had simply up and walked away.

There was a bloodstain on one of them and a pile of bandages. Hanzo didn’t want to think of why it might be there. The dissolution of Overwatch—and Blackwatch by extension—had been a methodical thing; this wasn’t the location of some disaster, forever frozen in time after its inhabitants had evacuated.

He followed McCree into a side room that looked like it was once a post-op chamber and watched as McCree sat on the edge of the bed.

“You don’t know what’s been there,” Hanzo scolded. “Bugs, mold…” They were both runaways, they both knew what it was like to sleep in less than ideal circumstances; that didn’t mean that they needed to like it.

But McCree had an odd look on his face and Hanzo stopped. McCree put the lantern down on the bedside table and held out his hands.

“You’re scaring me,” Hanzo told him flatly even as he placed his hands in McCree’s. He let him tug him closer, stepping between McCree’s spread knees.

McCree bowed his head, pressed Hanzo’s palms to his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said in a strangely broken voice. Then he tugged Hanzo closer so that one hand rested on McCree’s sternum and Hanzo’s other arm was wrapped around his neck. McCree placed his cheek against Hanzo’s chest and took a deep, shaky breath as if he were holding back tears.

“I’m sorry.” He wrapped his arms tightly around Hanzo’s waist and thoughts of scolding faded away. Hanzo squeezed McCree’s shoulder and stood there, letting the sounds of his steady breathing soothe McCree.

Beneath his hand, Hanzo could feel McCree’s heart beating, beating, onward.

* * *

“ _Hanzo?_ ”

He looked over at the panel just outside his cell. “Yes, Nox?”

“ _How did Agent McCree die?_ ”

For a long moment, Hanzo was quiet. “I cannot…answer any of it. I can’t tell you if he has or if he hasn’t.”

The AI was quiet for a long moment. “ _Will he be happy?_ ” he asked at last.

Hanzo was quiet. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s hard to tell with him. I like to think that he was, though.”

“ _That will have to be enough for me,_ ” Nox said with a heavy electronic sigh. “  _I suppose I will meet you again._ ”

“You say that like we’re leaving,” Hanzo observed.

The AI gave a staticky laugh. “ _I have another question,_ ” Nox said.

“I will answer if I can.”

“ _You will think it strange, especially for an AI._ ”

“You  _are_ a strange AI,” Hanzo said with a little laugh.

Nox hummed. “ _Will you visit me?_ ”

For a long moment Hanzo stared at the panel. He smiled. “Every day that I knew you, I tried to.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie.

It was possible that Nox knew and just didn’t say anything about it. Instead he said very softly, “ _Thank you._ ”

Hanzo hesitated. “I think…when I first met you, I could sense…” he looked away, trying to figure out the best way to answer without giving everything away. “You and I were similar.”

“ _Are we friends?_ ” there was a strange sort of hopefulness in Nox’s voice.

“As much friends as an active killer and a Blackwatch AI can be,” Hanzo assured him. “I like you better than most people.”

Nox chuckled, a rattling, staticky sound. “ _But not more than you like McCree._ ” Hanzo didn’t answer directly but he laughed, too.

* * *

Hanzo couldn’t exactly pinpoint why it was so important to clean out the forgotten halls of the Blackwatch base but something about them tugged at his heartstrings. Perhaps it was for that mere reason—after having spent so long thinking that he couldn’t feel such emotions, he gravitated toward the one thing that made him feel.

Strangely enough, the Blackwatch AI was friendly—far friendlier than Athena was. He had introduced himself as Nox when McCree had first brought McCree to these dark hallways and now, he greeted Hanzo every time he approached the hidden doors.

Hanzo found himself greeting him back after the fifth time.

It was easy to see how achingly lonely Nox was, and the first time Hanzo put the thought to words he had been shocked. Even Athena didn’t seem to feel such things: she was always very proper, always professional.

Nox seemed more human.

So Hanzo endeavored to visit more often. He brought a broom and Nox directed him to one of the recreation rooms. It was a mess, wires corroded from neglect, and there was enough dust over everything that it looked like a room that extended into perpetuity, the edges blurred. Hanzo had to wear a mask and was disgusted to find that when he left, it was stained black; how Nox had managed to remain functional, Hanzo would never know.

Instead of cleaning the rec room, Hanzo found Nox’s main server room and started there. With Nox’s careful guidance he cleaned out the servers, organized the wires, and swept away the dust that covered everything.

It was slow going but soon Nox could speak clearer.

One day Hanzo asked hesitantly, “Do you know who I am?”

Nox had replied, as easily as if it were such a silly question, “ _Of course I do. You are Shimada Hanzo, brother of Genji. You are a friend._ ”

That night Hanzo hadn’t been able to sleep, staring out over the midnight sea and thinking of those words.

The next morning, Hanzo immediately went to the door to the Blackwatch base and presented himself to the scanner. As soon as the doors closed behind him and his comm beeped to indicate that Nox had connected, Hanzo clicked on the lantern and found the first of the AI’s broken panels, located near the door.

“ _Good morning, Hanzo,_ ” Nox said, a note of curiosity in his voice. “  _I’m not accustomed to seeing you so early._ ”

Hanzo set the box down and adjusted his mask and goggles. “Good morning, Nox. Will you show me how to fix this panel?”

“ _Of course,_ ” Nox said. “  _But why? Wouldn’t you rather fix the recreation room?_ ”

“Perhaps,” Hanzo agreed. “But first I’d like to see my friend as I greet him.”

For a long moment Nox said nothing but Hanzo’s comm beeped again, bringing up the specs of the panel in question. At least Nox said very quietly, almost reverently, “ _Thank you._ ”

* * *

“I think I love him, Nox,” Hanzo whispered one night, drunk out of his mind and leaning against a clean wall beside one of Nox’s terminals.

“ _I think you do too,_ ” Nox replied, an odd note in his voice. “  _And I think he loves you back._ ”

Hanzo swallowed the lump of bitter hope that rose in his throat and lifted his mask long enough to wash the lump down with a long drink of the contents of the bottle in his hand. “I’m scared.”

“ _I am, too. Love is a very scary thing, my friend. It makes you do…it makes you do things that cause others distress_.” Hanzo hadn’t been sure what to make of that so he said nothing. Tipping his head back, he lifted his mask again and took another long drink.

* * *

Angela led them along the beach and then up another incline, waving off Baptiste’s help. She still sniffled but Baptiste didn’t have the heart to comment on it.

Something beeped nearby and Angela stopped. “It’s me, Nox.”

“ _I know,_ ” a tinny voice said. It gave a staticky sigh and Baptiste realized that it reminded him of an old omnic…or an AI like Athena. “  _Is it that time?_ ”

Angela sniffled. “It is.”

The voice sighed. “ _Oh. I had hoped…_ ”

“I’m sorry, Nox,” Angela whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“ _Who is with you? My visual sensors here are broken. Hanzo…Hanzo was going to fix them._ ” This Nox sounded almost wistful and far too sad.

Angela waved them closer. “Lena Oxton and Jean-Baptiste Augustin. This is Nox, the Blackwatch AI.”

Nox made a thoughtful noise. “ _Augustin_ and  _Ziegler_ ,” it said as if realizing something. Then it sighed again.

“I didn’t know that Blackwatch  _had_ an AI,” Lena said wonderingly. “How are you still active?”

“ _With great difficulty_ ,” Nox replied. “  _And…with a lot of assistance from Hanzo._ ” It sighed again. “  _Letting you in just makes it real._ ” Despite its words, a small panel hissed open in the rock face. A section of it pushed forward and then split to form a doorway. “  _He deserves…it’s only fair to him. He’s been so lonely._ ”

Angela led them fearlessly into the cliff, revealing that it was a natural thing with enormous ceilings and walls worn smooth by waves over time. It formed a natural pocket, lit by the sun that shone down through the open ceiling.

“What is this place?” Lena asked wonderingly. Her voice was swallowed in the distant roar of the sea.

A nearby panel blinked. “ _This is one of the hidden burial grounds of Blackwatch,_ ” the AI Nox said. “  _There are many such burial places around each Watchpoint. Each Blackwatch agent will note where they would like to be buried or interred for each base. Shipping bodies is difficult so they made do._ ”

“Why not be buried elsewhere?” Baptiste asked.

“There are Overwatch cemeteries,” Lena pointed out. “Why not bury them there?”

“ _Most did not want to be buried with Blackwatch personnel_ ,” Nox replied as if it were obvious. “  _The spies and the liars and killers. There wasn’t anybody to mourn them anyway, so let them have their peace here. They worked in the darkness so let them have their time in the sunshine._ ”

Angela led them down a winding path slick with the spray of the waves. “Nox?” Lena called a little louder so that her voice would be heard. “Does Athena know you’re here?”

“ _Probably not_ ,” came the AI’s distant voice.

Lena looked at Baptiste with wide eyes and he shrugged. It wasn’t his place. “Do you think McCree wants to be buried down here?” Lena asked instead.

“ _Undoubtedly_ ,” Nox replied immediately.

At the same time, Angela said, “He’d want…” she trailed off as if unsure.

They entered another chamber, this one as brightly lit as the other. The sea caves allowed more sunlight to shine in, lighting up what was unmistakably a mausoleum.

A small solar-powered generator, looking almost brand new, powered a small forcefield that kept the wind from blowing sea spray back into this area. If Baptiste was one to bet, he’d guess that it also kept the waves from washing in and ruining the graves. It probably also served as a holographic projector to keep others from seeing it from the sea.

Niches had been carved into the walls and granite markers read the names of innumerable operatives that had been buried there. Most only had their call signs and when they died.

A small panel turned on; this also looked brand new.

“Everything in here seems new,” Lena observed, echoing Baptiste’s thoughts. “Why?”

“ _Hanzo came down here at my request to make updates,_ ” Nox replied. “  _I wanted to make sure that this burial place was preserved._ ” It seemed to hesitate. “  _And…I wanted to be able to visit my friend._ ”

Angela waved. She had gone down another sunlit path. Here the ground had been raised and a series of low granite steps had been installed. It housed an area of sandy dirt dotted with granite headstones. A few enterprising tufts of sea grass poke up at the edges but none along the center area, which lay in the sunlight.

Another screen beeped as it turned on and Angela led them toward it.

“It must be terrible,” Lena said softly. “Being forgotten here.”

“ _It’s lonely,_ ” Nox agreed. “  _And peaceful. It seems to vary_.”

Lena sighed. “It’s such a beautiful area, at least. But I can’t imagine, Nox.”

“ _I’ve seen many people buried_ ,” Nox said, sounding far too sad and too tired for an AI. “  _I’ve learned their names and their stories and saw them off to battle. I’ve seen them come back in urns and body bags and watch them be interred her to be forgotten by all but a few. Reyes…_ ” he trailed off.

Baptiste swallowed hard and looked for Angela. She was kneeling next to a grave, her hands folded in her lap. He moved to stand next to her, looking down at the headstone. A simple terra cotta vase had a few withered flowers and there was another of Nox’s panels near this particular headstone, as if Nox had indeed been visiting a friend.

For a moment Baptiste warred with dismay. He didn’t care for AI and liked to tell himself that it was because of the Crisis; perhaps he was just afraid of something that pretended to be human. But this AI, Nox…it was unnerving. He _mourned_.

Baptiste sighed and focused instead on the grave. It was near the end of a row with an empty space next to it, near the edge where it dropped off into the rumbling sea. He could see the faint blue shimmer of a force field, probably the same one from the other room that kept the sea spray from doing more damage, kept the sea from taking back the little burial ground. From his vantage point he could see out to sea, to the deepest blue waters and out to the pale horizon.

Like the others it was a simple granite stone. It was cleaner than the rest and Baptiste wondered who had come to visit the forgotten grave of someone called “Blue”.

* * *

Hanzo stared down at the small graveyard, his hands propped on his hips. “Nox?”

His comm beeped. “ _Yes, Hanzo?_ ”

“Do the tides affect access to this area?”

There was a pause as Nox seemed to consider his answer. “ _No,_ ” he decided. “  _There is at least one other viable access to this area over land, but it is not easy to manage with large equipment. The high-water marks are past the lower edge of the path, but aside from being careful of rip currents it should not be an issue, as I estimate that it will be less than knee-deep for you_.”

Hanzo’s lips twitched. “Is that a comment on my height?”

“ _Of course not,_ ” Nox replied. “  _It’s a comment on how short your legs are_.”

That startled a laugh out of Hanzo. “I will come back early tomorrow,” he explained. “This will be an all-day project, just the weeding alone. There’s a lot to be done here, Nox.”

The AI was quiet for a long moment. “ _I know,_ ” he said softly. “  _Thank you for…indulging me._ ”

Something in Hanzo was close to breaking. He cleared his throat to keep from choking up. “It gives me something to do,” he said. “And I think it’s a little easier than clearing out an entire dusty base.”

“ _Yes,_ ” Nox agreed, clearly humoring Hanzo. He was strangely thankful for it. “  _And…I like it out here._ ”

Hanzo smiled to himself. “Then I will see if I can add more panels and cameras here for you.”

“ _Can you…_ ” Nox trailed off. “  _There’s a grave there in front of you. Can you…start there please?_ ”

At Nox’s direction, Hanzo walked along the dusty path to a plot in the far corner, kneeling among the sea grasses until he found the simple granite headstone. He twisted off the leaves of the grasses around it and brushed away sand and dirt.

Reaching for a bristled brush, Hanzo scrubbed the years of neglect off of the headstone and ran his fingers over the carved letters. It was a simple headstone, as were all of the ones in this forgotten Blackwatch tomb. Unlike the others, it didn’t even have a date of death, just a simple name: Blue.

* * *

Hanzo was loading his work bag when McCree found him.

“Need some help, there?” he asked. “You look like you’re going out for a long hike.”

Making a face, Hanzo had to agree to both. It would take multiple trips to carry all of the equipment needed for Nox’s panels, and the more trips he did in a day the more likely his comings and goings would be noticed.

Strangely enough he felt like he could trust McCree with this secret area. It was, after all, a Blackwatch area—and he _had_ introduced Hanzo and Nox.

To his credit McCree didn’t ask questions about what was loaded in the bag on his back, just grunted as its weight sank on his shoulders and set to walking.

“Do you know where you’re going?” McCree asked as they walked along the beach, angling for that secret turn that led to the graveyard.

“I do,” Hanzo confirmed. “Nox told me about it.”

“I almost don’t want to go,” McCree admitted, a strange tone in his voice. “There are ghosts there.”

Hanzo looked at McCree. “Your assistance this far is appreciated. If you don’t want to continue, you can leave your bag at the door.”

“No,” McCree told him quickly. “It’s not that. It’s just…I’ll help but…” he shook his head.

Nox opened the door for them as they climbed the next rise. “ _Oh. Hello, McCree._ ”

“Heya, Nox,” the gunslinger replied, for once not sounding like his cheerful self.

Hanzo was aware of the incredibly awkward silence between Nox and McCree but said nothing of it, walking down the round paths carved by the sea to the first area of the mausoleum. At his gesture, McCree set down his burden nearby and edged toward the tunnel to the graveyard.

“You mind?” he asked quietly. “There’s…someone I want to see.”

“Of course,” Hanzo replied just as quietly with a small bow of his head. “Take your time.”

McCree swallowed and Hanzo pretended not to see how his eyes were too wet. “Thanks.” He cleared his throat. “Thanks, Hanzo.”

As Hanzo knelt beside the malfunctioning generator, Hanzo mused that McCree sounded like he was thanking him for something else.

It was probably just his imagination, though.

* * *

Hanzo found it odd to be traveling by hypertrain, especially an Overwatch-issued one, but stranger things have happened to him, he supposed.

Across from him, McCree continued to glower; he was evidently banned from smoking and sat not unlike a sulking child. In his own time, Hanzo might have teased him about it, or distracted McCree from his cravings with a gentle touch, a series of texts, a kiss.

This version would probably put a bullet through his eyes.

He closed his eyes against the little voice in him that whispered,  _would that be so bad? You’d be back with your McCree_.

“What, are you  _trainsick_?” McCree mocked, shattering those terrible thoughts.

Hanzo was sick, but not like that, and he would get no sympathy from this version of McCree. He would get no sympathy from anyone but Genji, the one from his time, who might comprehend his thoughts.

“No,” he said even though it was a rhetorical question and McCree hadn’t wanted an answer.

McCree sneered and Hanzo wondered what kind of self-sacrificing idiot he was that he would allow himself to be beat up like this to take McCree’s mind off of his vice.

What had happened to him, that he would let himself be stepped over like this?

 _A fool in love_ , Nox had once teased.

Hanzo resisted the urge to sigh.  _A fool indeed_.

* * *

Mei had been crying. Her eyes were swollen with it, the skin around them red and inflamed from her wiping them away; Snowball had teary eyes in his display.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice high and wavering. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. It’s just…”

Winston lifted a large hand and awkwardly patted her back and shoulder. It was unnerving to see her this broken up but it was no wonder; this was probably too familiar to her. He looked at the screen and sighed when he saw a red notice blinking: SIMULATION FAILURE.

“We tried,” Winston told her as gently as he could. “And we’re still trying. We learned how not to do it so now we need to try again.”

Mei’s body heaved in broken sobs and she buried her face in her hands. “I know-ow-ow-ow,” she said, voice breaking as her body shook. “B-bu-but…”

Sighing, Winston reached out and lifted her in one of his arms, pulling her close. “I know,” he said softly. He watched the notice blink on the screen, each flash like a slap in the face.

A reminder of his failure to keep his team safe.

“I know,” he repeated as his eyes slid to the picture of the team that hung on the wall. They were all smiling, dressed for the beach and a picnic, and he tried not to think about how that was the only picture they had of everyone together.

He looked back at the screen and sighed as Mei clung to the beveled edges of his armor.

It was fortunate that Athena had picked up the energy signature of the thing that had stolen Hanzo and Genji away, or they would have been wasting more time chasing shadows.

Time. Time travel.

Winston tried not to sigh. He had thought that he was done with messing with it. The chronal accelerator was difficult enough but deliberately choosing a time? And pulling two people  _forward?_

Their only lead was that they went somewhere that predated Athena’s presence in Watchpoint: Gibraltar…but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t have appeared elsewhere.

It was all a headache upon headaches but…

Winston looked at the picture again. McCree’s hair had been terrible in that picture, had been bleached a terrible blonde and he had changed his prosthesis to something more waterproof, a red monstrosity that looked more like a cheap plastic toy than an advanced piece of technology.

They were smiling, all of them—even Hanzo wore a ghost of a smile as he leaned close to McCree whose arm was around his shoulders. For a long moment Winston stared at the picture, committing every detail to memory.

He stared at McCree’s arm around Hanzo’s shoulders, how Hanzo seemed to be pressing closer, and wondered.

Wondered…and mourned.

“We need to take a break,” Winston decided, still staring at the picture. “We’re doing no good if we work ourselves to death.” Mei made a heartbreaking sound but nodded. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

Mei sniffed and Snowball warbled as he nudged at a box of tissues. “They loved each other, you know,” she whispered as she reached for a tissue with shaking hands.

Thinking back to a thousand things that he had overlooked, Winston nodded. Gentle touches, soft looks, that peculiar little smile that ticked up the corner of Hanzo’s mouth. How they always sat together, trained together, cooked together.

 _God_ they were  _roommates_.

Winston sighed. “Yes,” he agreed as he ushered Mei out of the lab. He cast one final despairing look at the blinking notice and then at the picture. “I know.”  _Now_ , he thought but didn’t say.

 _I know_ now.

* * *

When McCree came to again, his head and torso were propped up and there was a cool towel over his forehead. There were voices, too.

“—on the way _,_ ” someone was saying. “Is he alright?”

“Does he need chest compressions? Is that what you do for this?” someone else asked.

“Leave him be,” the person he was laying on said with enough quiet authority that the other voices fell silent. “Did you find aspirin?”

A door opened and Reyes said, “What happened?”

At the same time, someone snarled, “ _What did you do?_ ”

McCree could hear something scraping, then the sound of metal-on-metal. Beneath his head and chest, the person didn’t flinch but McCree did, opening his eyes.

The two versions of Genji were body-to-body with their swords, the older version with his back to them. He looked up and found that he was lying on Hanzo’s legs; the man was looking down at him.

“I know that it is detestable,” he said simply. “But remain still until the medics arrive.”

McCree gritted his teeth. “What happened?”

“Take it outside,” Reyes ordered. “Genji!” with a feral hiss the cyborg obeyed, disengaging and stalking out like an offended cat. Blue sheathed his blade, gave a short bow, and left the train car, the others in the room streaming out. When they were gone, Reyes closed the door.

“The medics are on the way,” Hanzo said levelly.

Nodding, Reyes knelt next to McCree. “What happened?”

“One second I was walkin’ fine and the next…” McCree grimaced.

“He collapsed,” Hanzo finished in an eerily flat voice. McCree could feel him shaking and wondered why. “I managed to catch him before he fell but I do not know if he hurt himself, regardless. When I realized that he was not breathing, I began chest compressions and sent one of the others to find the medics.”

McCree could feel Reyes’ concerned look but instead he stared up at Hanzo’s strangely bleak expression. “The fuck do  _you_ care?”

Hanzo’s hands were shaking and his lips were pale as he pressed them tightly together. “Take him, please?” he asked Reyes. “I will make sure the medics find their way.”

At Reyes’ nod they switched places and McCree hated how weak he felt from even that slight movement. When Hanzo had closed the door behind him, Reyes sighed. “Kid…”

“Ain’t a kid,” McCree snapped.

Reyes sighed again. “You gotta see that—”

“Ain’t one to retire,” McCree snarled. “Might as well just throw me from the train, then.”

“I don’t want to bury you,” Reyes told him sharply. “You’re…you’re young, McCree. You deserve a long life ahead of you.”

McCree sneered up at his commander. “Somehow I doubt that.”

He could tell that the conversation wasn’t over yet. “Think about it,” Reyes advised. “Did you—”

“The man outside briefed us,” one of the medics assured them. “Heart attack?”

“Do you have a history of these?” the second medic asked.

McCree sighed heavily as the first picked up the medical scanner and found the chip in the back of his neck.

“ _Oh_ ,” the medic said and showed the screen to the second. “You have iron heart syndrome.”

* * *

Hanzo was surprised by a knock on the temporary quarters he and Genji had been given. It was poor practice to house two prisoners together, but the facility they were at was too small to accommodate more…and it didn’t have a dungeon for them to rot in.

It was McCree and he pushed his way past Hanzo who moved aside to let him through.

In another life, in another time, this visit would have had an entirely different outcome. Never before had Hanzo felt the difference so keenly and his heart ached. He buried it all in a tight little ball that rattled around beneath his ribs and closed the door behind this younger version of McCree.

He was standing in the middle of the room, looking around. There were two simple cots and two milk crates that held Hanzo’s clothes—Genji had turned down their offer, citing that he was more or less clothed in his armor, anyway.

(Unable to help himself, Hanzo had scoffed.

“Shut up, Hanzo,” Genji had shot back without thinking. They had both laughed until they remembered where they were and found the past-Genji staring at his future self as if he were some kind of traitor, and McCree sneering at Hanzo.)

Grunting, McCree sat down, coincidentally on Genji’s bed, and lifted an unlabeled bottle in his hand. “Where’s Blue?”

“With his past self,” Hanzo replied after a brief moment to remember who he was talking about. He carefully sat down on his own bed, ignoring how they were close enough that their knees almost brushed. McCree had long legs though and when he stretched them out with a grunt that sounded too old for his young body, they bracketed Hanzo’s left leg. “I believe they are meditating, or that is what I was told.”

McCree grunted again and twisting off the top of the bottle, took a long drink. Gasping, he held it out to Hanzo. Sniffing it, he found that it tasted much like the paint thinner that  _his_ McCree used to drink when he wanted to forget. Hanzo took as long a sip, making eye contact with this past version of his lover, and handed the bottle back without coughing.

“I shouldn’t be impressed,” McCree grumbled. He took another long sip. “I have iron heart syndrome. Some stupid variation of cardiomyopathy.”

Hanzo nodded once. “From the radiation,” he said. “From the Crisis.”

McCree made as if to spit but seemed to remember where he was; he took another long drink, instead. “They thought it was a heart murmur at first. Then it got worse.” McCree made a face and handed the bottle back to Hanzo. “The muscles start seizing up, way I understand it.”

“The tissues begin to solidify,” Hanzo murmured. “The radiation causes mutation in the cells of the heart that causes them to harden. They almost begin to ossify, hence the moniker ‘iron heart syndrome’. Caused by the Omniums, caused by the  _robots_.”

He had remembered children that had the disease. Many families had turned to the Shimada Clan for help. There were many, many names on the list of people that needed heart transplants and so few on the list of heart donors.

The laugh that McCree offered was bitter and Hanzo recognized it as the one that McCree used at his most self-deprecating. At the anniversary of an event where he withdrew from everyone…even Hanzo.

“That sounds about right,” he said. “They been after me to retire.” He made a gesture and Hanzo handed back the bottle. “So that’s what you saw.”

Hanzo was quiet for a long moment as McCree tipped his head back and drank. He wanted to say,  _if you’re this unhealthy, then you shouldn’t be drinking_.

There were a lot of things that he wanted to say. He began to wonder if they were dimensionally displaced as well— _his_ McCree was healthy.

 _His_ McCree had never mentioned iron heart syndrome.

But then Hanzo doubted again… _would_ McCree have mentioned it? How many times had McCree said, “  _I never expected to live to twenty_ ”?

“ _I never expected to live to thirty_ ”?

With iron heart syndrome, he wouldn’t have. That he made it to his twenties and was able to move around at all was amazing.

“Late-onset,” McCree grumbled, beginning to slur his words. He shoved the bottle at Hanzo who took a generous sip. “Only diagnosed after I signed my life away here. You know about that?”

Hanzo hummed. “You’d told me, once.”

Swaying, McCree grunted. “Must’a been close, then.”

Thinking of all the ways they were, Hanzo’s throat closed off. He nodded.

“I ain’t gonna…” McCree trailed off. “I ain’t gonna ask when I died. Or…fuck, if Reyes managed to get me to retire or what else might have happened. Just…” he squinted at Hanzo. “I can’t figure out why you’d care. Must’a been a right ass to you. Just can’t wrap my head around it.”

Hanzo didn’t answer, wasn’t sure how to, knew that he couldn’t. He drank more.

* * *

“Is there any particular reason that McCree is in my bed?” Genji asked when he returned.

Hanzo blinked at his brother, at both iterations of his brother. It was almost as if he were seeing double and he struggled not to laugh. If he laughed, he’d cry and that little ball of feelings in his ribs would shatter.

“We had a talk,” Hanzo said. “He’s drunk.”

Genji hummed in agreement. “I will sleep in the corner, then. Let’s not disturb him.”

It used to be unnerving, that Genji could do so. He’d press himself into a corner, let it prop his back up, and switch into a strange kind of sleep that was neither true sleep nor an omnic’s stasis mode. Worse was that he did it with his eyes open, staring unblinkingly at nothing and everything.

“I don’t like leaving him here,” the past Genji said. “I will stay as well.”

Hanzo shrugged. He corked McCree’s bottle of liquor and lay down, taking a moment of slow breathing to will the world to stop swaying.

The past Genji watched him with eyes that glowed a hellish red, shining in the dark and trained on Hanzo. He should be unnerved but he wasn’t.

Closing his eyes, Hanzo fell asleep and dreamt of warm arms and whiskery kisses.

* * *

“You ever thought of it?”

Hanzo held his breath as he set the last feather. He wasn’t and never would be a fletcher, but it was an interesting hobby to pursue—and logical given his weapon of choice.

Inspecting the arrow, Hanzo nodded and set it to dry and turned to McCree. They were curled up in the “spare” room in their suite, both occupied with weapons care. McCree had Peacekeeper’s many components laid out in front of him and he was cleaning each one with deliberate care.

His shoulders were also hunched and he was looking down enough that it was hard for Hanzo to clearly see his face.

“Think about what?” Hanzo asked as he selected another shaft. Finding that it was warped slightly he discarded it and chose another.

When he looked up again, McCree had stopped working and was looking at him with a strange expression. His lips twisted and he opened and closed his mouth a few times as he seemed to struggle how to answer. “Marriage.”

Hanzo’s eyes flicked toward the Save the Date they had pinned to their calendar board. As if they would forget the day—it was, understandably, the only thing that Lena talked about as the date approached.

“Not anymore,” Hanzo said carefully. There were landmines here and he wasn’t sure where to step. Instead he watched McCree watch him. “I had…expectations. Marry a good woman that brought power and money and strength to The Clan. Produce heirs and raise them in accordance to…” he trailed off. “That was all I had thought of marriage. Looking at prospects and I was surprised that I was allowed that much grasp of my destiny.”

McCree looked away as if to steel himself and turned back to Hanzo. “And…now?” Hanzo waited him out and McCree sighed, slumping in his chair. “Just…Len’s getting married. I’m happy for her but it just makes me think, y’know?”

Smiling, Hanzo got to his feet and walked over, careful of the other bits of gear that were strewn about. He cupped McCree’s face in his hands and eased his head up to give him a soft kiss. “I don’t think of marriage,” he said and pressed a kiss into McCree’s forehead. “And I have no interest in signing a paper to show my love…but if that piece of paper was of any importance, I don’t have anyone else I’d rather marry than a certain cowboy.”

McCree surprised Hanzo with the tears streaming down his face. Before Hanzo could ask, McCree kissed him hard, yanking him closer.

Some days he was embarrassed by how easy it was for McCree to distract him. Today was not one of those days.

He let McCree pick him up, wrap his legs around his waist, and carry him out of the weapons room.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is not talking of love, but living in love that is everything.

The scientists were fascinated with Hanzo and Blue and McCree watched them swarm like so many mosquitoes in the summer.

Beside him Genji fidgeted, uncomfortable with the proceeding. “If you want, you can leave,” McCree whispered to him. “I got this.”

“No,” Genji said simply and shifted again.

The scientists chattered at each other and then flocked toward one of the large display monitors. McCree itched to light up but it would just make them honk like geese and make this last longer.

Beside him, the door opened and Reyes swept in. “Update?”

For a while the scientists all looked at each other. One was finally brave enough to say, “We’re not sure how to proceed.”

Reyes sighed. “What are your thoughts?”

The brave scientist cleared her throat. “Well, if it was a matter of…well, teleportation, that would be one thing. But this is also through _time_ .” She fidgeted with her clipboard. “Okay, in _theory_ , we might be able to apply something similar—that would be the fastest to get this…settled.”

“Applying teleportation technology would be tricky,” Hanzo said, much to McCree’s surprise. “It would require a source—here, for example—and also a receiving pad at the final point.”

The scientist nodded. “That leaves a lot of variables to work around,” she said and McCree was impressed that she was able to speak to him without shaking. Even one of his hands was enough to crush her head like a melon. “It needs power—how will it receive the power? It needs to remain in working order and not, say, gutted for parts. It needs to be able to receive signal.”

Reyes held up a hand. “Back up.”

“Right now, they are suggesting that they use a modified teleporter,” Hanzo explained while the scientist nodded. “You need a receiving end as she said—easy enough by…” he hesitated. “I’m uneasy at the thought of deliberately manipulating the future, but we may have no choice. Since we are going _forward_ , all we need to do is find a location for the receiving pad.”

“It will naturally travel through time,” Reyes finished. “But you need just the right place to make sure it still works.”

Hanzo and the scientist nodded. “Genji?”

Blue had tipped his helm down as he thought. “Perhaps one of the auxiliary bases,” he said carefully. “Grand Mesa?”

“I’m not sure I’d call that an ‘auxiliary base’,” McCree muttered.

Blue heard and nodded. “True, but there are a lot of forgotten corners there where these pads can go.”

“It’s a theory,” the scientist warned. “We can make the staging area there as well, but…there’s the whole ‘travel through time’ issue and making it work through a teleportation pad.”

“So we’re stuck until you can come up with the theory of time travel,” Blue said flatly.

Hanzo shrugged. “ _Or_ we live out the rest of our lives here,” he suggested.

“Fuck, you suck at making jokes,” McCree muttered. He ignored the looks that Hanzo and Reyes traded.

* * *

“Been thinking of retiring,” McCree said a little too-casually.

Hanzo hummed, nearly asleep. “I thought you wanted to die by bullet than old age?’

Chuckling, McCree pulled him closer. “I’m _serious_ , Han.”

“I am, too.” Hanzo yawned and opened his eyes, looking up at McCree. He was staring down at him with such open adoration that his heart hurt. “I thought that you wanted to die in battle, going out guns blazing.”

A part of him wanted to be hurt but at the same time he understood what it was like.

“Priorities change,” McCree said quietly. He tugged Hanzo closer and buried his nose in Hanzo’s hair. “I have someone to come home to and I…I don’t him to be waiting forever for me.”

Hanzo pressed his nose against McCree’s chest, breathing in the smell of sweat and skin and sex and the lingering traces of tobacco. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “So you’re thinking of retiring.”

“Mmhmm,” McCree murmured. “Thinkin’ of buying a house or something. Somewhere quiet.”

“You’ll go crazy,” Hanzo pointed out with a watery chuckle. “All alone in the middle of nowhere?”

McCree was quiet for a moment. “Ideally I wouldn’t be alone,” he said quietly. “I’d…have you with me.”

Startled, Hanzo’s eyes snapped open and he lifted his head to look down at McCree. In the faint glow of the moon through the window, McCree looked like a dream. His hair was mussed, his skin still shiny and flushed with exertion. The blankets covered his nudity but Hanzo’s movements were threatening to expose him but neither moved to stop it.

He stared up at Hanzo with hope and adoration in his eyes and Hanzo’s heart leapt into his throat. Leaning down, he kissed McCree gently, felt his dry lips part in a soft sigh. “No cows,” he said. “I draw the line.”

McCree’s smile was like the sun coming out after the storm. He yanked Hanzo closer for a hungry kiss that felt like it was sucking out his soul through his mouth…even though McCree had done the same not too long ago elsewhere on Hanzo’s body.

“I can’t promise anything,” McCree breathed against Hanzo’s lips when they parted and Hanzo began to laugh.

“You’re welcome to change my mind,” he purred and pressed a biting kiss to McCree’s lips.

Slowly their kisses slowed and they curled together again. “We can talk to Winston about it tomorrow?” McCree asked softly and Hanzo hummed. “Love you, Han.”

Hanzo hummed again. “I love you too, Jess.”

And then the base-wide alarm went off.

* * *

Hanzo lay awake that night, staring up at the ceiling. He thought of the team they left behind.

Even knowing that returning would mean returning to a life without McCree, Hanzo found himself eager to return.

He missed Baptiste’s quiet support and even Reinhardt’s loud, overwhelming presence. He missed the faint traces of music that always seemed to be hovering around Lúcio like a tangible presence and how Lena and Hana’s volume only built when they were within line of sight of each other.

Rolling over as quietly as he could, he peeked over at Genji and found him still in “standby”, as still as death.

For a brief second he remembered the sheet-covered gurney, mesa and Gorge formed by the hat thrust beneath it. He remembered the sticky feeling of McCree’s blood, how he could swear that he could almost feel the exact moment when his heart stopped, could feel the terrible wheeze of his last breaths.

McCree hadn’t even been awake—Hanzo couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Passed out from pain and blood loss, he had slowly wasted away over Hanzo’s shoulder as he ran as fast as he could back to the medics.

It was like a waking dream, a terrible vision that he couldn’t escape from. He could smell the blood, heavy in the air, could feel it hot on his skin, could feel where it soaked his clothes and made it press against his skin.

There was a faint spot of red on the wall, a barely-there wash that made Hanzo jump. Then it blinked.

And blinked again.

Slowly sitting up, Hanzo turned and found that the terminal beside the door was blinking. As if sensing that he was awake—most likely because Nox had sensors in this room—the light turned blue.

Hanzo carefully sat up, making sure to not wake Genji, and padded to the door.

_GOOD EVENING, HANZO_ , the terminal read. The lights were dim to preserve his eyes and to keep from waking Genji. _SCANS INDICATED THAT YOU WERE DISTRESSED. CAN I BE OF ASSISTANCE?_

The message scrolled through again before disappearing, leaving behind a slash of color—a cursor.

_I am fine,_ Hanzo typed back. _Am I allowed to go for a walk?_

Nox didn’t reply for a minute and Hanzo couldn’t even find it in himself to be disappointed, just tired. _COMMANDER REYES WILL BE HERE SHORTLY_.

By the time Hanzo moved back to his cot to put on his shoes and return to the door, it hissed open to reveal the commander. The door closed behind him. “Will Genji be okay?” he wondered.

“ _I will watch over him,_ ” Nox assured him and even though this was Blackwatch’s Nox, not Hanzo’s, he felt his shoulders relax.

“Thank you,” he said with feeling and followed Reyes down the hall.

“Bad dreams?” Reyes asked quietly but didn’t seem to expect an answer.

Hanzo nodded. “I smelled blood. There was so much blood.” That much was true, and let Reyes think that he was talking about Genji.

They walked in silence for a while down the halls, whose lights had been turned down to reduce electrical load. It felt so quiet, even coming from a small team housed in a large, abandoned base. There was always sound coming from somewhere—the chirping sounds of Hana’s games, the muffled music from Lúcio, the sounds of various late-night projects by Torbjörn or Satya or Brigitte.

Now it was just silent, these scientists obeying the need for sleep unlike Angela or Mei. Both were wont to stay up as late, or even later than Hana. Mei at least, Hanzo could understand: she had ten years of climate data to sift through. What better way to do it when she was chased from sleep, haunted by the ghost of her team dying silently in their…

Hanzo stopped suddenly and Reyes spun to look at him, startled. “Cryopods,” he whispered.

“What?” Reyes asked before understanding lit up his scarred face.

“Cryopods,” Hanzo repeated. “Why mess around with time when you can simply place object A to get to time B? We discussed the teleporter option but couldn’t figure out the time aspect of it!”

_And_ , he thought but didn’t say, _if the cryopods in the Antarctic base could survive for ten years, then why not now?_

He remembered walking those quiet halls. Understandably, Mei had not wanted to go back so a separate team had been dispatched. She had trained them for their journey but couldn’t even bear the thought of “the A-word”.

It only made her cry and nobody on base had the heart to say it around her.

Hanzo had remembered, he had been among the team to raid the base. He had been among the group that would find the cryopods that had become coffins and the simple offering of cups of tea long since frozen. He had remembered wondering at the simplicity of it—aside from frost flowers blooming, it was as if the entire base had been frozen in time.

Even the cryopods had been in good condition but then, conditions in Antarctica had been different than anywhere else.

He could hardly tell Reyes this, or even of it. As much as he wanted to save Mei’s team, he didn’t want to create a larger disturbance than his presence already made.

It felt like a hollow reason and he swallowed the lump in his throat, wondering if the knowledge that he could save her would haunt him for the rest of his life. If hollow ghosts of people he had never met would dog his footsteps to the end of time.

“Cryopods,” he said for a third time. “Cryopods with multiple power backups. Solar, geothermal, wind, wave, it doesn’t matter. They’re built sturdy, but they have to in order to support the cryogenics. You can put them in a remote corner of a forgotten base and nobody would be the wiser—they would just look like supply drums.”

Reyes was looking at him like a large hunting cat, his eyes wide with realization. “Cover up the glass front and the diagnostics screen, and it looks like some kind of fuel canister. Against a wall, it would look like some kind of support beam that nobody would move.”

“I don’t think Genji—Blue—would need much,” Hanzo mused. “Enough of him is cybernetic that putting him into a temporary stasis should keep him out but functioning—”

“It’s the part of him that’s human,” Reyes agreed. “And _your_ stasis pod would be the problem one.” He grinned, a flash of very white teeth against his dark skin. “Come on, let’s wake up the scientists. It’s like cow-tipping but more interesting.”

A memory sank bone-deep in the blink of an eye, turning his entire body to stone.

_“Don’t wake the scientists,” McCree whispered, wrapped around Hanzo from behind, his big palms resting on Hanzo’s chest and belly. “Shh, baby.”_

_“Jesse,” Hanzo hissed even as he let his head fall back, let McCree mouth wetly at his neck, teasing at the idea of making marks there, laying claim._

_It had been weeks since his death and yet even in this waking dream he felt so real and every touch was painful, threatened to shatter his heart into a thousand-thousand pieces._

_“Easy, baby,” McCree whispered, just as he had in the dropship as they headed to Illios. “Don’t wake everyone.”_

_Despite his teasing, his touches were chaste—neither of them were so hedonistic as to fuck in front of their teammates. Even so Hanzo could see that Mei was awake, a blush beginning to grow on her cheeks; from where McCree was sitting, he probably could not see her eyes half-opened._

_“Hey baby?” McCree murmured against his neck. “I love you,_ mi corazón. _”_

_Unable to help himself, despite seeing Mei’s shoot open in surprise, Hanzo smiled and turned to McCree, pulling him into a kiss. “I love you, too,_ mi sol. _”_

There were hands over his mouth; his own. Reyes was watching him a safe distance away. There was something knowing in his eyes.

“‘Jesse’,” he echoed and Hanzo felt something twist in his stomach to know that he had said something in his delirium. “You love him.”

Hanzo swallowed, dragged the ragged strings of his dignity together and didn’t answer.

What Reyes had heard or hadn’t, what he already knew, was answer enough.

* * *

Cryopods cost money.

Lots of money.

Money that Reyes couldn’t requisition without becoming suspicious. So they were traveling to Grand Mesa, where Hanzo could tell he was reluctant to go.

Hearing McCree wheeze on the hypertrain, everything clicked into place.

“What is your life expectancy?” Hanzo wondered out loud before he could stop himself.

McCree sneered. Both versions of Genji had gone off somewhere, leaving McCree and Hanzo alone…or as alone as Nox would allow. “What’s it to you?”

Hanzo shrugged. “Just curious. The altitude is not to your liking here.”

That much was obvious; McCree had stopped lighting up a long time ago, occupying himself with chew that stained his teeth all kinds of noxious colors. He seemed pale and his breaths were wheezy.

McCree scowled at him. “Not long,” he said, to Hanzo’s surprise. “In the opposite way. I already outlived their last prediction.” His mouth ticked up in a familiar smirk. “Got the Devil’s luck; stuck around past 14 when they thought I’d keel over.”

“When you joined Deadlock,” Hanzo mused.

It seemed that McCree was in a talkative mood for despite the derisive snort he said, “yeah, ‘bout then. Figured, why should I go to school when all I’m gonna do is die? Might as well live a little. Joined a gang, learned to shoot. Met Ashe.”

Ashe.

That name struck a chord in Hanzo’s memory. McCree’s eyes had softened just a little when he talked about her when they first joined Deadlock; anything afterward, they hardened into stone and his mouth curled down into a scowl.

Hanzo had always wondered but then, as now, was not the time to ask.

“Bet I never told you about her,” McCree guessed. He snorted. “Don’t blame myself.”

“I know the name,” Hanzo admitted, not seeing the point in lying. He was tempted to tell McCree that he stole her hoverbike but that was giving away too much.

It was really tempting, though. He wondered what this McCree’s voice sounded like when he laughed like that—that particular one he used when pleased, very pleased, at someone else’s misfortune.

McCree grunted, seemingly uncaring of Hanzo’s own horror at himself. This McCree was a child and he a grown man.

This wasn’t _his_ McCree.

Somehow that hurt worse, cut deeper, than anything else Hanzo had experienced thus far. He had seen his lover die and somehow knowing that there was another version of him, right here, right in front of him, made it worse.

This wasn’t his McCree—this was his McCree’s past. Hanzo’s throat closed up.

“I wish the Gorge had taken her,” McCree said at last, looking out the window as the scenery whipped past. “God, I wish that I had kicked her down and watched her fall. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not when Bob was staring at me like that. You ever regret something so much?”

In many ways it was a silly question.

“Many regrets,” Hanzo murmured, turning to watch McCree’s reflection. This version of his lover was angry, always angry; his always smiled, or at least he smiled when Hanzo was with him. “Too many to count.”

McCree grunted and turned his head away to cough, high and breathy, before spitting into the bottle at his side. Hanzo didn’t mention it and McCree chose not to speak again. Aside from the distant hum of the train and wheeze of McCree’s labored breaths as they climbed into the mountains, their car was silent.

Ahead, Watchpoint: Grand Mesa loomed.

* * *

“Where do you think you’re going?” Agent Tracer demanded.

It was like something out of some childish high school drama. Am I not allowed at the “cool kids’ table”? he wondered to himself.

Dr. Zhou looked terrified, her eyes wide and her face pale as she stared at him. The little droid that Hanzo’s briefing had introduced as Snowball, was buried in her chest as if it couldn’t bear to look at him, either.

For a moment Hanzo debated how best to answer. There was only one working table in the mess and it was a cheap plastic thing that had been bought in town by Genji as he escorted Hanzo to the Watchpoint. At the moment there were only a few people in the mess, one of the reasons that Hanzo had chosen to arrive at this hour.

Agent Tracer solved that problem by snatching the tray out of his hands and putting it—more or less dropping it from a few centimeters up, really—on the ground. She jabbed a finger at the dusty concrete floor to emphasize. “Dogs have microchips and dogs don’t belong at the table.”

Flimsy logic, or at least poor phrasing on her part. Still, Hanzo slid into _seiza_ as if this didn’t bother him.

“What’s this, here?” the cowboy on base asked as he wandered in. Even as early as it was, he was still dressed in his leather chaps, flannel shirt, and thick blanket wrap twisted around his neck and hanging artfully over his left arm.

At first Hanzo had thought that he was some kind of animal wrangler and when he had tentatively asked Genji what animals were on base that a manager was needed, his brother had only laughed.

_McCree is an old friend of mine_ , Genji had said. _He just has terrible fashion sense. Always has_.

Agent Tracer seemed to waver but as many did when they believed themselves to be the heroes, she straightened and said, “I put him in his place. Dogs belong on the floor.”

At that moment, Genji wandered in, his face plate off. From his frown, he had heard that. Before anyone could say anything, the cowboy barked out a loud laugh that almost made Hanzo jump.

Almost.

The cowboy turned to Genji. “I always _knew_ you were a bitch.” Genji punched his shoulder and the cowboy twisted away. “Shimada _-san_ here, I’m not so sure about. So what’s the _real_ reason for hazing him, Lens?”

Hanzo was interested to note that Agent Tracer shifted nervously. There was a note of frost in the cowboy’s voice and it was enough to make Agent Tracer stiffen to attention—history in the military, then.

She didn’t answer, probably wondering if she should feel guilt. She was right, after all, wasn’t she?

The cowboy wandered into the kitchen as everyone remained silent; he returned with a plate of food and much to Hanzo’s surprise, sat down on the ground next to him with a heavy sigh. He stuck out a hand, retracting it for a moment to take off the glove, before shoving it back at Hanzo. “McCree. Jesse McCree.”

Surprised—wasn’t this one of Genji’s old friends? So surely he must know what Hanzo had done—Hanzo took his hand and shook it. “Hanzo. Shimada.”

Even saying his family’s name made something curdle in his gut. McCree didn’t seem to notice, turning to squint up at Agent Tracer like a cowboy from some ancient Western. “You’d be surprised who has microchips,” he said with a friendliness that was at odds with his expression. “Got one way back when, too. They didn’t wanna lose track of me.”

Genji joined them on the ground as well, sitting cross-legged beside Hanzo. “I have one as well. I was too valuable an asset to let loose.”

“Medical microchips are common,” someone said and Hanzo turned to find the medic, Dr. Ziegler, standing in the doorway. There was an odd expression on her face as she stared at Hanzo. “It more accurately displays information such as identity, allergies, blood type, and so forth. It’s not just for keeping track of criminals, Lena.”

Hanzo figured that he’d have trouble with her. Agent Tracer crossed her arms and collapsed in on herself, looking inexplicably guilty as if she was being scolded and embarrassed for it.

“I know,” she said. “But it’s not right to have him here.”

“If you think that he will act against you, then it works against you to treat him like he will bite,” the doctor said, much to Hanzo’s surprise. Then she turned her pale blue eyes to him. “Shimada _-san_ , I apologize for not meeting you last night; something had come up. If you have time, then I would like to meet with you later to discuss your medical care and history while you are here. Athena can assist you in making an appointment.”

Then she came and sat down at their group on the floor, as if she weren’t sitting next to the man that tried to kill his brother.

Hanzo couldn’t understand it.

But they were all smiling as they ate so Hanzo tucked his chin down and focused on his food.

* * *

“I won’t be around tomorrow,” McCree said into Hanzo’s hair. They were tangled together, naked and sweating from the heat of two large bodies beneath the heavy duvet.

Hanzo poked his head up, looking at McCree in confusion before remembering the date. “Oh.”

“Sorry, sweet,” McCree said and Hanzo leaned in for a kiss.

“I had forgotten,” Hanzo murmured against McCree’s lips. “All day?”

McCree’s throat bobbed. “Yeah,” he said roughly, lifting his prosthetic hand to cup Hanzo’s cheek. “And probably…most of the night. If not all.”

Closing his eyes, Hanzo leaned his face into McCree’s hand. “Okay,” he said. “Do what you need to do.”

“How did I get so lucky?” McCree asked, his voice cracking and Hanzo opened his eyes to find that McCree’s were a little too wet.

Humming, Hanzo leaned close and pressed a kiss to McCree’s nose just to watch his face scrunch up. They kissed for a while, Hanzo bracing himself on his elbows over McCree until his shoulders protested.

“Is it an anniversary?” Hanzo wondered out loud much later, thinking that McCree was asleep or almost.

McCree made a soft noise against Hanzo’s chest. They had shifted, Hanzo on his back with McCree resting his face in the crook of Hanzo’s shoulder, his cheek pressed against the tail of the dragon curling around his arm and chest. “…visiting an old friend,” he said at last.

“In the graveyard,” Hanzo guessed.

He could feel McCree swallow hard. “Yeah,” he said, voice shaky.

Thinking back, Hanzo remembered caring for the graves under Nox’s careful supervision. He remembered installing a camera and a terminal panel for the AI in the wall of the graveyard, next to one of many forgotten graves. The first time he had gone back, he had found flowers there—simple ones, ones you could find growing wild in the areas around the Watchpoint, but flowers nonetheless. It seemed to be the only grave that was ever visited and it was easy to narrow down the suspects: McCree, Genji, or Dr. Ziegler.

Perhaps even Baptiste, but he had never mentioned any previous Blackwatch affiliation, or even any Overwatch affiliation until his recent joining, so Hanzo was fairly certain that he wasn’t the mysterious visitor.

“Is it Blue?” he asked the dark ceiling above them.

For a long moment McCree said nothing. The world was dark, only a tiny sliver of moonlight sneaking in through the curtains. It was as if time didn’t exist—in this hazy plane, there was no judgment in action or answer or question.

Or lack of.

Hanzo didn’t expect McCree to answer but he thought that he knew what he would say anyway. He was proven right a moment later when McCree whispered, “Yes.”

Pulling McCree closer, Hanzo held him as he took deep, shaky breaths as if to keep from crying. Hanzo said nothing of the dampness he could feel on his skin and made no move to see if it was from McCree’s breath or from tears.

Privately he wondered who this Blue person was that they could reduce McCree to tears like this. He would never ask, though. It was bad enough that McCree was upset enough about it that he wanted to sneak off without much warning other than to tell Hanzo that he wouldn’t be around.

“He…he did something,” McCree said shakily. “That I had never understood. That I had never been able to thank him for. Visiting him like this feels hollow but…it’s the only way I can thank him, you know? At least, the ‘him’ that did…” he trailed off and Hanzo didn’t ask.

But he really wanted to.

Instead, he held McCree closer and pressed silent kisses to his hair. He was stuck in a bizarre kind of helplessness and Hanzo hated it. Logically he knew that there were things out there that he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t prevent no matter how hard he wanted to, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have to like it; especially when it caused McCree this much pain.

Now all he could do was hold McCree who gripped him back with bruising strength. Slowly his breath slowed and evened out, but it remained wet.

So was Hanzo’s chest.

“I’m starting to think I know why,” McCree said softly, long after Hanzo had thought he had fallen asleep. He sounded nearly there, his words slurred with sleep and from being pressed against Hanzo’s skin. “And if I’m right, there’s nothing I could do to stop him. I’m too selfish and it’s too late anyway, I think.”

McCree’s arms tightened around Hanzo’s waist and his breath evened out into sleep, the tips of his fingers twitching in a way that had always told Hanzo that McCree was asleep and not pretending.

For a long time Hanzo stared up at the ceiling and wondered.

* * *

“Why are we here?” Sombra wondered. “Ach, I don’t know why I play with you, _araña_ ,” she complained as Widowmaker began cleaning up the crate they had used as a card table.

“Theory: because you think that you can cheat,” Widowmaker replied.

Reaper said nothing, moving toward the cockpit. The two women heard nothing but didn’t expect to until they heard him dragging something heavy behind him. “In and out,” he said shortly. “We don’t have a lot of time before Talon realizes that we’ve gone blackout without a mission planned.”

Rolling her eyes, Sombra wiggled her fingers, flashes of light trailing the tips of her nails. “Longer,” she said. “And I’ll go ahead and disable the tracker, buy us more time.”

“Question: what’s so important that you needed to kill the pilot?” Widowmaker wondered as she tucked her winning chips away.

Reaper shook his head. “Sombra—”

“I’ll stay with the ship,” she said immediately. “Make sure that nothing untoward happens. Get rid of the delayed trackers and listening devices. You go and do whatever it is you need to do.”

Widowmaker watched Reaper. “Do you need me?” she asked, reaching for the case that held her rifle.

“Follow me,” Reaper said after a moment of thought. “Stay on the ground. I don’t need a sniper right now. Bring the gun.”

She picked up her rifle and followed him quietly. “Question: are we after information? Supplies?”

“No,” Reaper said simply. “We’re after a person. And I’m fulfilling a promise I made.” They walked along the silent halls of the abandoned Watchpoint base.

The Grand Mesa facility was still in use, but not this portion of it. It was dangerous flying so close, but he needed to. What felt like a lifetime ago, he had promised that he would be here.

Widowmaker, unlike Sombra, didn’t press. He could that she wanted to know, that it itched at her like a physical thing, but she said nothing and obediently followed him, keeping a sharp eye out on their surroundings.

For years he had walked this path in his dreams, ingraining it into every cell of his being until he could do it with his eyes closed. He remembered everything down to the stones on the ground, but that was only the stones on the ground so many years ago when he had first walked this path.

He had visited this site often, as had McCree before he left.

Before he ran.

Reaper couldn’t blame him but at the same time wondered if he had ever visited this site, or if he only visited the Gibraltar site.

“Question: does this have to do with the anomaly that Talon detected in Gibraltar?” Widowmaker wondered. “Theory: you destroyed that base for that reason.”

He grunted. “Very good.”

“I try.”

Reaper smiled, but the monstrous grimace was hidden by his smooth mask. “They were messing with things that they should not have. Once Sombra confirmed that their data was only saved in that area, I made sure that they couldn’t use it again.”

Widowmaker paused and Reaper turned to look at him. Evidently it was enough to temporarily break her of her conditioning. “Time travel.”

“Yes.”

She seemed to be considering something, her wine-red eyes narrowing. “Theory: with that technology, you could go back and save me.”

“I could. But at what cost? What else would that change? I could make the world better or worse.”

Widowmaker watched him for a long moment. “Thought,” she said slowly. It was something new that she had been doing lately, and a painful kind of hope rose in Reaper’s throat each time. “I don’t think…I would want you to save me.”

“Why not?”

The sniper regarded him as if he were a particularly difficult puzzle. “I don’t think…that I would be happy. And I don’t think that I would be happy to understand what I do now.”

Reaper watched her. “One day you might.”

She nodded once. “I will address that issue when it happens.”

Nodding, Reaper turned back and led her between two dirty buildings to a small courtyard. Ahead of them loomed a large reinforced workshop. Enormous piston-like columns leaned against the walls. Time had eroded a few and some were crumbled, blacked, and ruined as if something had exploded against them.

Putting her hand on one she yanked it back immediately, looking at Reaper in alarm. “Machine.”

Reaper nodded. “Help me find a crowbar.”

They searched the rubble until Widowmaker carried the old tool out of a nearby shed and she watched as he dug it into a narrow seam along the piston’s side. It groaned but ultimately gave way beneath Reaper’s inhuman strength.

She stepped back and looked at the glass that was revealed. After looking at Reaper for permission, she stepped forward and put a hand on the glass, watching her cool skin fog up against the extreme cold of the cryopod. “Question…” she trailed off. Reaper could see her mouth and throat working as she seemed to try to process what was happening.

“Help me wake him up,” Reaper said. “While the pod warms him up, we need to look for his gear.”

Conditioning took over—once Widowmaker had admitted that it was almost comforting sometimes, to not have to think—and she read off the numbers on the side for him to type in. Soon steam—or something that looked like it—was hissing out of the vents.

She followed him around to the decorative path and found a trowel in a nearby shed to help him dig up the stones. Buried beneath another ten centimeters of dirt was a burlap sack wrapped around a long, thin bundle.

“I’m amazed that nobody thought to look here,” Reaper mused, lifting the bundle. “But I doubt anyone would decide that they wanted to steal _paving stones_ of all things.”

Widowmaker looked on in interest as Reaper pulled the protective layers of cloth away to reveal a long _ōdachi_ and _wakizashi_. The traditional-style handle, crafted out of metal and fiberglass molded to the particular grip of its owner, was braided with vibrant black and green cord in a diamond pattern.

* * *

“You shouldn’t love me,” Hanzo whispered, trembling as McCree held him close.

McCree snorted. “Too bad,” he said, his voice weaker than Hanzo was used to hearing from him. “You have it.”

“Can I change your mind?” Hanzo wondered even as he craved to hear those words again. “You could do much better.”

“I could but I don’t want to,” McCree replied. “I want you—is that so hard to believe?” A hand came up and stopped Hanzo from responding. “Besides. It’s not any of your business—you cannot stop me from doing something so monumentally stupid as loving you.”

Hanzo grumbled against his hand and turned his fear into kisses against his fingers. When McCree released him, he pressed those kisses to McCree’s lips instead.

* * *

Blue watched Hanzo with unnerving intensity. “Are you sure?”

“No,” Hanzo replied. “You can’t be sure with such things. But…”

Fortunately, Blue seemed to understand and nodded once. _But Mei survived_.

That had its own issues. Mei’s survival had been an anomaly, both good and bad fortune wrapped in one. In theory it should be fine, so long as the power sources remain intact. Unlike Gibraltar, this area had no crashing waves to convert to energy; the Blackwatch graveyard was in a series of networked caves but there was no underground river to power those turbines.

Solar panels were tricky and they ran the risk of being taken down and recycled when this portion of the base was abandoned after the Fall.

Worse, the cryotubes had to be opened manually—they could not risk an AI knowing about this. Someone had to be there.

“Are you scared?” Genji wondered, looking at the disguised cryopods.

A polite distance away, McCree looked on, gnawing on a cigar. Hanzo imagined that he could hear him wheezing, could hear the shuddering of his heart as it struggled to pump blood in this high altitude.

“Good question,” Hanzo mused.

He was strangely terrified and not—what did it say of him that he almost wished that his cryopod failed? Let him be the sacrifice and let Genji live; it was better than figuring out a life without McCree.

A long time ago Hanzo had hated the old romantic cliché that one spouse could not live without the other; now he could relate. It’s not that he _couldn’t_ live without McCree—it was that his world was that much darker without him there to be his sun.

On the other hand, his love for McCree—a love that ached, that was almost a physical pain—warred with his love for his brother. Genji deserved his life with Overwatch.

It was his choice.

So, let him go back and let Hanzo die quietly in the icy embrace of the cryopod.

“I am terrified,” Hanzo replied. _I’m terrified that you will die and I will live._

_I’m terrified that both of us will die._

_I’m terrified that both of us will_ live _._

“Brother,” Genji said quietly. “You know you cannot stay here.”

“It’s not in my thoughts,” Hanzo replied just as quietly. _Here he is not_ my _McCree; my sun and moon and stars, and I am not his corazón, his darling_.

They fell silent again, staring at the cryopods—their salvation, or their doom.

* * *

Hanzo laughed deliriously as the glow of the biotic field lingered on his skin. It felt like if he moved his hands, his entire being would fall apart.

Beside him, McCree wheezed, hands shaking as he tore at his chest plate. Some enormous force, a Heavy unit, had crumpled it like paper. It had saved his life but now it would become his tomb if it was not removed.

It hurt to move but Hanzo did, being the only one close enough. His hands knew even now how to under those many hidden clasps and he groaned, both in pain and in horror when he saw McCree’s blood-soaked chest.

“No,” Hanzo wheezed. It hurt to move, his own injuries burning as he tried to move. “No, no, Jesse _no_.”

He would not lose McCree again.

The medics came, followed by Reyes. Gently they eased him away as they began to treat McCree’s most recent injuries. They opened another biotic field as the one that they had been using previously died.

“You’re injured!” Reyes exclaimed, looking at Hanzo.

He laughed with blood in his teeth. At the same time, the medics said, “get the defibrillator, his heart’s giving out.”

A familiar form appeared among the throng, holding a prototype of what would eventually become her staff. Now it was only a meter long and connected to a canister on her back by a braid of wires.

The wings, her Valkyrie suit though, was in working order albeit in a different color. Hanzo watched as her blue wings, as blue as the dragons, as the sky, spread; she leaped toward them and was pulled through the air as if drawn by a rope to their side.

Hanzo sat back heavily on his ass, clutched his middle, and continued to laugh.

“We can stabilize him,” one of the medics was saying, seemingly not noticing Hanzo. “But he’ll need a new heart.”

The young Dr. Ziegler turned toward Hanzo, fidgeting with her prototype staff and turning a hesitant golden beam on him. It was like a spray of biotic field rather than the glittering rope that Hanzo was used to and his breath hitched.

“You’re injured,” she told Hanzo as if he didn’t know. “Oh, my.”

One of the medics spun and looked down at the ruin of Hanzo’s stomach. “He’s good as dead.”

“I can save him,” Dr. Ziegler said hotly. Her hands shook as she fiddled with her staff.

With her modern staff, perhaps but even then, it was a stretch—there was only so much that she could do and sepsis was a serious risk with gut shots, even with biotic fields.

Hanzo laughed and laughed and felt blood gurgling in his throat. “You can’t,” he laughed, his eyes on her spread wings. She was mantling like a hawk protecting its kill and his vision was filled with blue; he could not bear looking at McCree lying so still on the ground. “You can’t, not yet.”

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Angela said to the simple headstone on a forgotten grave. “I’m so sorry. I wish I had been there for him. I wish that I could do something.”

Baptiste reached out and squeezed her shoulder gently. “You cannot save everyone,” he reminded her quietly.

She swiped at her tears with sandy, dirty hands and left streaks behind on her pale face. “I know,” she said hotly. “I know but I wish. I wish…”

Lena knelt down beside her. “Who was he?” she asked. “Or she? They?”

“I didn’t know his full story until much later,” Angela whispered, her voice cracking.

“ _It was a temporal disturbance,_ ” Nox said from the nearby terminal. “ _I am not privy to the last moments of his life but I know…I know the story of it._ ”

Baptiste wondered how terrible it must be to be burdened with such knowledge, such grief. This group was so much closer to each other than he had to his teams in Talon. It meant that they watched each other’s backs on and off the field.

It meant that injury or death cut that much deeper.

“Temporal disturbance?” Lena asked with understandable alarm.

“ _He was time-displaced,_ ” Nox replied but Baptiste thought that he seemed strangely hesitant. “ _And he came to die in the past, apart from his time._ ”

Angela dug around in the supply bucket and pulled out the small trowel. “McCree would want to be buried here, with him,” she said, grunting as she dug the leaf-shaped tip into the ground around the headstone. “And this should show his proper name.”

Taking the hint, Baptiste picked up the shovel and began to dig in the empty space next to the two women. It wasn’t the first time he’s dug a grave for a friend.

“ _He’d like that_ ,” Nox said and Baptiste wondered who he was talking about. He kept his head down and continued digging.

He didn’t need to think to dig. It was grunt work, but it was easy. Here the ground wasn’t as packed as he had expected, though he ran into occasional patches of mud and clay that resisted the sharp edge of the shovel.

“Here we go,” Lena said and there was a thump.

Then a peculiar kind of silence. Baptiste looked over at them, at the dark imprint of the stone that now lay overturned. There was writing there, hidden as if nobody was meant to read it.

Grunting, Angela shoved the stone back into place and reached for the coarse brush she had brought along.

“What?” Lena asked in a small voice as Angela began to scrub the dirt and mud from the carved name on the stone. “What?”

Baptiste leaned over just as Angela cleared a stubborn chunk of mud. “No,” he whispered, dropping the shovel.

“ _Yes_ ,” Nox said miserably. “ _Yes_.”

* * *

To his credit, Genji didn’t immediately attack—he probably couldn’t, was too weak with his 10 years’ sleep and awakening from cryostasis to do much.

So he sat, legs crossed, and listened.

It was too fantastical a tale to believe, even to Widowmaker who continued to watch in the beginnings of curiosity.

“I would like to see him,” Genji said at last. His voice was choked. “If I can ask that much more of you.”

Reaper nodded and just as he had once in Medical, when he first helped Genji to stand after receiving his new cybernetic implants, he pulled him to his feet. “I have a message of my own to give him.”

To her credit, Sombra didn’t seem too surprised to see Genji when he climbed aboard. “I sent them on a wild goose chase,” she told Reaper. “It’s funny how a little service drone can cause so much distress.” Her eyes flicked to Genji as he sat down in numb silence. “To Gibraltar?”

“To Gibraltar,” Reyes confirmed and Sombra wiggled her fingers.

Beneath them, the ship rumbled as it began to take off.

* * *

Everything was falling into place.

_Mi corazón_ —my _heart_.

How McCree would always place his ear to Hanzo’s chest as if listening. The story of Blue, of the forgotten grave in the forgotten cemetery.

_I’m starting to think I know why_ , McCree’s voice said in his memory. _And if I’m right, there’s nothing I could do to stop him. I’m too selfish and it’s too late anyway, I think._

Hanzo laughed and laughed. It hurt to laugh but still he did and tears washed streaks into his blood- and mud-splattered face.

“Stop it,” Dr. Ziegler hissed. “You’re losing blood.”

“Bury me by the sea,” he told Reyes, letting himself fall back. “Let Nox watch over me like he watches over the others in Gibraltar. And let…”

Dr. Ziegler fiddled with her staff and the beginnings of a beam tickled Hanzo’s side. He felt light-headed from shock and blood loss. Reyes knelt beside his head.

“Biotics will only do so much,” Hanzo mused to the open sky above him. “Biotics will heal slowly and then the sepsis will kill me from the poison—”

“Stop,” Dr. Ziegler hissed.

“I’d done it before,” Hanzo whispered. “Give them a small biotic field. Watch them crawl. Heard their cries. So this is what it feels like. A gut shot won’t be healed with biotics—it’s one of the few things that can actually kill people these days.”

Reyes knelt beside Hanzo. “If we can get you to the cryo—”

“So I can die elsewhere?” Hanzo wondered. It felt harder to talk. “No, let me at least be of some use here and let me have my peace.”

* * *

“I was so sure that I could save him,” Angela whispered and her tears dripped on the tombstone as she scoured it with the brush, cleaning away years of accumulated mud and sand. “But he was right. In the end we nearly couldn’t…”

“Nearly couldn’t what?” Lena demanded. “What _happened_ , Ange?”

Baptiste stared down at the inscription:

Shimada Hanzo  
I’ll always be close to you

It was Nox that answered. “ _They had devised a way to return to their own time_ — _Hanzo and Genji both. They had just put Genji into cryostasis when the Watchpoint: Grand Mesa was attacked._ ”

“I remember that!” Lena breathed. “That lead to the witch hunt. Everyone thought there was some kind of double agent somewhere.”

Behind them footsteps approached and they all turned to find Genji walking slowly toward them. They all bristled when they saw Reaper following him.

“Why didn’t he tell me?” Genji wondered, kneeling beside his brother’s grave.

“ _Some questions will never be answered,_ ” Nox murmured. “ _I will never understand humans. Their capacity to hate is almost as great as their capacity to love. Hanzo was willing to give up everything so that McCree could live_.”

Lena turned to Genji. “Where were you?” she demanded. “We’d been looking everywhere. And you bring back _him?_ ”

“He was trapped in the past,” Angela said softly. “And was only now woken up. I was there for those meetings. I kept Hanzo alive long enough for him to discuss this with us. How we were to keep Genji from knowing. How McCree had died and he feared spending the rest of his life without him.”

Baptiste reached out, brushed his fingers over the damp stone. “He told me once that he had iron heart syndrome.”

“Not Hanzo,” Genji said doubtfully. “He wouldn’t have survived that long.”

“McCree did,” Reaper explained.

Lena twisted. “You don’t get to say anything,” she hissed.

“McCree did,” Reaper repeated, ignoring Lena. “The medics were making a hard push to get him to retire. He was given a choice, even if it wasn’t much of one.”

“I don’t understand,” Genji said helplessly. “Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t _any_ of them?”

“Guilt,” Baptiste suggested at last.

Angela nodded. “He couldn’t understand why someone like Hanzo could...would...be willing to do what he did.”

“ _You can’t even say it, can you?_ ” Nox asked from the terminal, sounding annoyed and hurt and so, so tired. “ _He sacrificed himself, foolish idiot in love that he was. He weighed his options and chose death. Not death by suicide but a death like it. Doing it for someone that he knew would end up dead, anyway. The gift of his heart, literally and figuratively, was only prolonging the inevitable for what? A few measly years?_ ”

“You were never this cynical, Nox,” Reaper said tiredly.

“ _Time does that,_ ” Nox replied. “ _Time and abandonment. When all you can do is watch over an abandoned base and a forgotten graveyard. When all you have left is to listen to the waves and wonder if someone will ever remember your presence. Wondering how long it will be until someone comes along and when they will die again. Borrowed time, that’s all that life is. Wretched, borrowed time_.”

* * *

“Nox,” McCree greeted as he walked into the graveyard. “Did you hear that Lena’s getting married? That’s Agent Tracer.”

The AI sighed. “ _I remember her. Is she?_ ”

“Her and her girlfriend Emily,” McCree confirmed. “It’s making me think, you know? I’m thinking of asking Hanzo. To marry me.”

For a long moment, Nox was silent. Then he asked very quietly, “ _Is that wise?_ ”

McCree shrugged and put a hand to his heart. “Nope, not at all. But life is short; why not make the best of the time we have left?”

Having no answer, Nox said nothing and let McCree visit the anonymous grave in peace. He considered stopping McCree, telling him that it was a fool’s errand, that Hanzo was _that age_ now, that they wouldn’t have the time that McCree thought they would.

But he held his metaphoric tongue and hoped that he was wrong.

Nox waited. He hoped he was wrong.

(He knew he was right.)

He watched the dropship fly off and thought, _it’s just routine_ , ignoring how the Overwatch base had run with the emergency alarms. How amazing that he could lie to himself.

When it returned many hours later, Nox didn’t dare listen in on the landing procedures because he knew what he would hear. In absence of having everything under control, Agent Tracer would follow the old Overwatch protocols.

She would call ahead for the medics and the base commander.

She would fly over the base, low and slow, and then circle back around to a little-used landing courtyard nearby. Little-used especially now. This would be the base’s first death.

Then she would land and have Athena make an announcement to all active personnel: Jesse McCree was killed in action.

Nox pretended not to see the dropship do exactly that. He wouldn’t receive Athena’s communique but he did receive a private message from Dr. Ziegler.

_I’m sorry, Nox. He’s dead._

Borrowed time, that’s all that life was. Where was the glory and the joy that everyone spoke of? Life went out in the blink of an eye, was there and then not.

Where was this longevity that everyone wished for? Why desire eternal life or a longer lifespan when all it meant was more death? More grief?

More wretched, borrowed time.

* * *

They patched him up, or tried to. Hanzo wasn’t any help; he couldn’t stop laughing at the irony of it.

Was it irony?

Or perhaps simply the paradox of it.

“Don’t tell Genji,” Hanzo begged Reyes, begged him and Dr. Ziegler. “Don’t tell Genji.”

Reyes nodded solemnly and gave him his word. “By the sea?” he asked.

“In the Blackwatch cemetery there to be watched over by Nox. By the crashing waves so that my spirit may stare out over the sea.” Hanzo sighed.

“It cannot say your name,” Reyes mused. “Everyone would wonder.”

Hanzo thought of the brilliant blue of the sky, the sea, Dr. Ziegler’s wings. “Blue,” he breathed. The intense blue of his spirits. He already could feel them fading.

It was a lie, one of many, that his elders had told him. The dragons were your companions for life.

There was nothing after death. They did not usher their host’s soul to the afterlife like his family liked to claim. It seems that was just another silly story that their father used to tell them.

The truth was that they just left.

Even now he could feel them breaking apart, washing away beneath the tide of his mortality like the sand castles that he and Genji used to make as children. Genji used to cry when the waves covered their lumpy renditions of Shimada Castle and only now could Hanzo appreciate that feeling.

“He’s losing a lot of blood,” Dr. Ziegler whispered. “I can’t help with that.”

Hanzo clung to the conversation with both hands. It felt like he was standing in the wave-slick rocks of the Gibraltar shore anyway, the hands of the sea tugging at his legs and trying to unseat his tenuous footing. “Your healing stream doesn’t replace blood at the same rate it’s lost.”

“But it should do better than Moira’s,” Dr. Ziegler hissed. “This is different.”

“Why do you want to do this?” Reyes asked. “Surely there’s better—"

Hanzo shook his head. “There isn’t a life there,” he said and knew that if Genji were here, he’d say that Hanzo was being melodramatic. “And I would solve a problem here.” He met Reyes’ eyes even as his own vision began to grey at the edges.

“He deserves a better life,” Reyes said in a low voice.

“This way he _has_ a life,” Hanzo retorted, his lips feeling numb. “If he wants to live or die by his gun then let him. But this way he has that choice.”

Reyes bowed his head, reluctance in every fiber of his being. “I owe you.”

In the hazy twilight of his life, Hanzo remembered the things that McCree used to say to him and now used them on Reyes. “You and your debts. Don’t think of it as a debt, as something owed; think of it as a gift.”

_You already gave me your heart_ , McCree had said.

Hanzo laughed. He had meant it.

He had really meant it.

* * *

Nox told them the whole story.

He and Reaper presided over the quiet funeral in a forgotten graveyard. In the distance, the sea roared.

Baptiste helped Reinhardt lay McCree’s body to rest beside the grave of the man that had loved him in this life and in the past.

They had an overabundance of flowers and it filled the small sea caves with their scents. They planted a magnolia tree beside Nox’s terminal, just out of the way of his visual sensors so that he could still watch over his friends.

Reaper stayed behind for a moment of privacy with Nox and the two graves. When Lena looked back, suspicious of the Talon commander, she found that he had knelt between the two headstones, his mask on the ground in front of him. A shape appeared in the air behind him, highlighted in purple hexagonal pixels before they revealed a person standing there, a familiar Talon hacker.

She wanted to protest, a yell of alarm on the tip of her tongue before she stopped herself. Remembering stories that McCree told of the trouble that he and the hacker Sombra caused while drunk and the stories she had heard in Overwatch of the close bond between Reyes and his right-hand man, McCree, she stopped.

Sombra knelt beside Reaper and placed a bouquet of flowers down between the two graves and produced two candles which she lit.

When Reaper’s shoulders began to shake, Lena turned and walked away to let them mourn in peace.

* * *

Hanzo couldn’t understand it.

He took another long drink from the stein of beer that Reinhardt had shoved in his hands. It was far stronger than the beers that Hanzo was used to, had a kind of heartiness that filled him too quickly for his liking, but he found himself drinking it anyway. He told himself that he was only being polite but the strong flavor hid the hint of the alcohol he knew had to be mixed in—there was simply no way that a beer alone could be that strong.

So perhaps he wasn’t using all of his mental faculties, much of it taken up by the kind of pleasant static one got while drunk, but he still couldn’t justify such a look on Agent McCree’s face.

He looked at Hanzo like he was trying to solve a particularly difficult problem. That was understandable—he had often looked at Hanzo like that during strategy meetings, as they tried to determine who was best suited for a particular mission.

He looked at Hanzo like he hung the sun and moon and dictated the placement of the stars with a wave of his hand.

He looked at Hanzo like Hanzo had once looked at Genji—like a ghost made real.

He looked at Hanzo like he was the sun breaking through the clouds after days of rain.

McCree drank deeply, breaking his stare and Hanzo turned to look at him. He was handsome enough he supposed: auburn hair that was either pressed flat from his ridiculous hat or artfully tousled, eyes the color of whiskey, legs accentuated by the slight heel of his ridiculous cowboy boots.

In the base he didn’t wear his chestplate which had what Agent Tracer occasionally reference (with equal parts humor and affection) his “nipple lights”, deadly in their own right.

Perhaps it was the alcohol speaking, but Hanzo was certain that the real things were better.

Agent McCree’s shirt, a simple button-down in red and white plaid, was stretched tight across his chest and shoulders and biceps and looked like a good flex would send buttons flying.

Despite himself, Hanzo found himself intrigued by that idea, only _he_ wanted to be the one that did so, that yanked open his shirt to see what the cowboy had to offer. Perhaps it was the liquor that released his inhibitions; perhaps it was simply the lighting, the mood. This wasn’t a job and at the moment this wasn’t his comrade-in-arms or his coworker.

Right now, as they celebrated a hard-won mission and a birthday, they were all just people—very dangerous people, but just people all the same.

Perhaps it was the alcohol clouding his judgement and his own hard-learned discipline but Hanzo was seriously considering indulging in a little more than alcohol.

He threw back the rest of the stein and made a face behind the rim at the sharp taste and tongue-curling bitterness. Then he walked to the alcohol table to consider his next step and if he was serious in having someone to warm his bed. More than likely, if he agreed, McCree would understand just what Hanzo was asking of him.

Perhaps he’d agree _because_ of that.

Halfway through his next drink and feeling pleasantly buzzed, someone cleared their throat near him.

“You know,” McCree said. His cheeks were flushed with alcohol but his eyes were clear and strangely sharp as they stared at Hanzo. It reminded him of a cat about to pounce and Hanzo couldn’t it in himself to be cowed.

He lifted his chin higher, looked as down his nose at McCree as he could when the cowboy was taller than him. “Yes?”

McCree stepped boldly closer and Hanzo thought that he could learn to like the smell of stale cigar smoke clinging to his clothes and the faint trace of soap and cologne. “They say I have the heart of a dragon.”

As pick-up lines go, it was rather bad but Hanzo couldn’t exactly say anything; he was sometimes worse. “Do you?” he asked. In this shadowed corner of the party, Hanzo let his free hand trail up the straining row of buttons covering McCree’s chest. This close, he could see that he was wearing a pale pink undershirt—probably one with D.Va’s logo.

“Mmhmm,” McCree said, voice quavering. He tucked his chin to his chest to better watch Hanzo’s fingers trace up his chest. They stopped over his heart and Hanzo pressed his palm there, feeling the warmth that he radiated and the quick tempo of his heart.

Hanzo hummed. “Well _this_ dragon,” he said slowly moving his hands over the swell of McCree’s pecs. “Has no intention of giving up his heart…but he’s hungry for other things.”

He watched McCree’s throat bob as he swallowed, watched his pupils expand to consume his golden irises until they were only a faint ring of gold.

Stepping back, Hanzo finished off the rest of his drink. “I may need to be escorted back to my quarters,” he told McCree. “Would you be so kind?”

“Yes,” McCree breathed like a prayer of the devout.

When McCree finally kissed Hanzo, locked away from prying eyes in his quarters, it was as if Hanzo were something precious; as if he was in an old romance drama.

As if they were old lovers reuniting after years apart.

Hanzo thought that he could get used to such kisses and mused that perhaps this was the most dangerous thing of all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not have a good place to talk about it but before curious can ask, but Reyes' elite team was split up shortly before the incident. Genji and Moira were sent to another base to receive their mission briefing. The building of the cryopods, which Genji and Moira weren't privy to, was delayed which led to the splitting of the team. 
> 
> They had managed to get Genji settled and in cryostasis before the masked men (and two Heavies) attacked the base with the intention of stealing the two people from the future for Talon. 
> 
> *-*-*-
> 
> That being said, thank you all so much for all your kudos and comments! When [Hero](https://twitter.com/ichigowhiskey) first mentioned the idea I almost brushed it off but I love me some good angst...and I was really, _really_ angry when I first started writing this. Without Hero, this wouldn't be so heart-wrenching (and I promise, I'm not blaming you!) This was the saddest thing I've ever fucking written and I fucking love it. The tears sustain me. 
> 
> Now I shall go and play some Stardew Valley and cuddle with my cat. 
> 
> Love it? Hate it? Have questions? Feel free to come and yell at me on twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). If that's not your thing, I can also be found on tumblr at [ClassyWastelandBread](https://classywastelandbread.tumblr.com/) but I am almost never there so expect a delay. 
> 
> I love hearing from you!
> 
> ~DC

**Author's Note:**

> I have a few more chapters ready to drop, which I will do when I get home from work today :)
> 
> Feel free to come and yell at me on twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). If that's not your thing, I can also be found on tumblr at [ClassyWastelandBread](https://classywastelandbread.tumblr.com/) but I am almost never there so expect a delay. 
> 
> ~DC


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